Canon 1000f - Kodak Ektar 100 film

Almost finished my film reviews and today it's another no brainer combo, my Canon 1000f using Ektar film. 

You might notice these recent photos below!

STATS

29 keeps 7 fails

Fail Reasons

The fail reasons were not having a fast enough shutter for pet photography - can't believe I keep forgetting that :p I also had a couple of shots overexposed and a couple underexposed

Things to Remember

Using an aperture of 3 or more for portraits really helps with focus issues (thanks Dani again!).
Using AV on this camera at night with the built in flash left some happy accidents of light trails :)

The flash was able to exposure our faces but the shutter which stayed open for what felt like a minute let in all those pretty light streaks :) Also remembering to overexpose by two stops seems to be the winning formula!

I feel like I've learned a lot over the last year or so and am super excited to keep learning and experimenting :)

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Canon 3 - Ektar 100

I'm back on that film review train and this time it's my Canon eos 3 camera with Kodak Ektar 100 film. I think this is a no brainer combination for returning good results :) Quality camera, with quality lenses and quality film - ticking all those good boxes!

I don't have the actual stats on how many shots turned out from this roll but all those 'a film photo a day' shots I posted whilst I was in Singapore were from that roll and if memory serves me it was a happy batch of film. If I want predictable photos I'll shoot with this combo knowing also that Ektar does some nice colours for landscape shots :)

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Woodford Folk Festival 2013-2014

A few days after Christmas, Ben and I headed to Woodford where a festival happens once a year, starting on Boxing Day and going through to New Year's Day. Our friends always make a big trip out of it, stay for the week long camp. Ben and I just went for the day and I pretty much spent the entire time melting! Oh my goodness it was so hot, it would of been close to 40 degrees that day (just happened to pick the hottest day of the festival) and since there was not a lot of shade I kind of went crazy! I'm always the first to proclaim I love the heat and summer and being hot but it was that belting down kind of sun that made me feel crazy and dizzy and I think I got mad at Ben for buying me a poster...sorry Ben!

The festival itself contains lots of different tents and inside - bands and workshops, talks and other random creative things - we made ourselves an itinerary before we let but that kind of got abandoned in the heat :p

It's sort of hard to see in this photos but the few places that did have trees, people flocked to like crazy!

I loved her butterfly wings above!

We were meant to stay for the night parade but Ben knew I was in trouble when I stopped taking photos (a sign that something isn't right with fee). Ben kept pointing out photographic things but I was in another World :p Maybe next year I'll give Woodford another chance but make sure check the weather forecast beforehand :P

On the plus side I did get to watch Darren Hanlon perform and he was awesome as ever!

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Film Christmas

Before it's officially too late to stop posting Christmas photos, here are some shots from a roll of film I recently got developed. I used my Canon 1000f with Ektar film (will review soon!)

You may notice, from the above picture, I like to clash at Christmas! Thanks Dani for the 'upping the aperture' tip to get my film shots in focus, seems to be working, hurrah!

Ben and I went to my family for Christmas lunch, Ben commented it was a very Australian Christmas spread; cold ham, fresh prawns, chicken, salads and of course Bon bons!

At night we headed to my friend's shane place, they have a wood fire oven, so we all made our own pizza and had a pizza-off, my pizza didn't do so great because the pumpkin was slightly undercooked...oops!

And then Ben and I ended the night by getting silly but we're always silly, so that's not so odd :p Ben went back to work the other day, so it's back to being boyfriend-less for another six weeks, nooooo! I've learnt to adjust to him being away (sorta) but it's still sucks, I miss my buddy :(

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OM1 - Ektar 100

I get to show you where my love of film photography really began :) I won't go into the whole story as you can read it over here but essentially it involved being given my Grandma's Olympus OM1 after she passed away about ten years ago, being really inspired and then letting the camera sit in a box until 2011. I actually thought the camera was broken from years of neglect and perhaps that's where my film photography story would have stopped but my brother was the one that got me to develop that "one more roll" and I've been taking film photos ever since.

My Dad like his Mum (it's was her OM1) is also into photography and has really taught me a lot - he was also the one who suggested I try the kodak Ektar 100 and for pretty much a year I used that solely. I have a lot of fond memories of the OM1/Ektar combo and I'd happily recommend it to anyone :) Unfortunately in August last year I slipped on ice in Tasmania, dropped the camera and afterwards it no longer metered. A simple fix would just be to get an external light metre which I plan to do anyway, so no biggie, it shall live once more :) I thought I'd share some of my photos I took! I have hundreds but I've tried to condense them down into a snap shot for you guys!

The Ektar film is great because it's a high quality film without the excessive price tag of kodak Portra. I get a big bundle of it from eBay and it turns out to be under ten dollars for a roll which is nice :)

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135bc Holga - Ektar 100

We're moving onto the toy cameras now, which in some ways are my favourite and in other ways make me want to cry with their unpredictable nature :p I picked up the 135bc holga because I wanted a cheap holga that took 35mm film, my other holga which takes medium format film was a pain in the arse to find processing for.   Luckily processing is much more available especially in the online world than it was in 2005, so I definitely want to get back into playing around with my old holga! but anyways I digress!

The 135bc is the cheapest holga you can get it's all plastic and the "bc" bit just means it has forced vignetting (vin-yet-ing) so instead of the black edges occurring naturally on the film the 135bc has black inserts to stop the corners being exposed. Some people might find this cheating or tacky but I'm all for it :p

STATS

14 keeps - 12 Fails (+10 never exposed)

Fails Reasons

I tried googling to see why 10 frames never exposed I thought maybe I had left the cap on and the shutter had clicked in my bag but then I read this guy's suggestion about never putting in a roll of 36 exposure because there is too much film being wound onto the spool and could cause you to break your camera. Maybe it just didn't wind on? Mystery ... next time I'm going to stick with 24 exposure film just in case it was the 36 roll issue!

The other reasons for the fails were that people's heads were cut off - the view finder doesn't accurately describe what will translate onto the film.  I also found myself with lots of underexposed shots - this camera needs lots of light! It does have two nifty features for helping the light situation, firstly, you can change the shutter speed to "b" which basically means as long as you are holding the shutter release button down it will stay open thus letting in lots of light but also may result in blurry pictures unless you are using a tripod! The second is that some toy cameras won't let you take more than one exposure once you hit the shutter relase button but the holga 135 will, which means you can take heaps of exposures on one frame equalling lots of light! The photos above I took in Singapore - for the overcast days I used triple exposure and even on the fairly sunny day I still used double exposure (the lilly pads bottom right)

Things to remember: Aim high when shooting to avoid cutting off people's heads! Use 24 exposure rolls and only use on super sunny days( I'd even double exposure on super sunny days!)  Finally  make sure what setting you're on, if you're on the bulb 'b' setting and you just want to be on the normal 'n' setting this could mean a lot of your photos come out blurry - depending on how long that finger of yours lingers on the shutter release button. I'm actually still not 100% in love with holgas I find they produce soft images but if you're aware of this you can definitely use it to your advantage! I also have a flash for my holga which I'll talk about later as it's an add on I love and would recommend :)

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