B&W film photos

Today's blast from the past is a bunch of film photos I had developed and which I scanned myself (see here for that tutorial!). They are mostly from my trip to Melbourne last year, where it was my goal to use film each day.  Kind of half failed, only managing to get through one roll but I did love that one roll, so maybe less is more?!? For those playing along at home, the film I used was lomography's lady grey 400 and I shot on canon 1000f :)

I'm off to Japan in March and I'm hoping to try and take up the film challenge again and hopefully this time more than one roll!

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Canon EOS 3 - Lomography 400 b&w film

We get to compare the lomography 400 b&w film to the t-max 400. I'm just going to say I think t-max has the edge. I liked how the t-max roll came back with more contrast which is something I personally appreciate in black and white photos :) I found I had to use the lomography b&w in really sunny locations to get the same contrast that seemed to come more naturally in the t-max. That said I'm a big fan on black and white and apart from focus issues (my biggest downfall!) I was really happy with the roll that came back. 

You guys also get more pics from the wedding too! I tried to have with me throughout the day my digital camera, a film camera with a colour roll and a film camera with a b&w roll...excessive much :p  

I'm thinking more about my focus issues, with this roll I had learnt not to rely on autofocus and just manually focus but it seems my eyes let me down, especially at night.  With digital photography I'd just look at my display screen and re-take the photo if it wasn't in focus which is something you can't do with film.  Dani (from the awesome blog the cat you and us) pointed out in the comments that focusing wide open (low aperture) on the canon 3 would be like playing Russian Roulette (Thanks Dani!) I kind of didn't think about that but it makes perfect sense.  So 1.4 means not much is in focus, which means what you want to be in focus (say the eyes of someone) has to be dead on - a more narrow aperture, that keeps more things in focus, gives more of a buffer zone :)

So the solution I think is to kick up the aperture especially in low light situations or maybe buy some glasses! If someone has another suggestion for improving focus I'd love to hear :)

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