Holga 120n - 400 tmax film

So I already mentioned about pulling out my old holga, excited to be able to get 120 film developed relatively cheaply and easily - thanks lomography online! Since I hadn't pulled the camera out in eight years I also hadn't pulled out the film I brought to use with it - some Kodak 400 tmax that expired in 2008.

Now I'm hoping the results weren't determined by the expired film and how I'd mistreated it because that was a lengthy (totally unintentional) process I don't wish to repeat - I was smitten though with how the roll came back and I hope future non-expired rolls can deliver something similar :)

I'm not normally one to look at photos gleefully when they're underexposed (a problem that happens frequently with toy cameras on not super bright days) but something about the black and white, the lack of sharpness that you get with holgas, coupled with the mostly underexposed shots turned into something I really loved :)

Even though their is a perception about toy cameras being cheap (and admittedly my model was!) you have to be prepared to start forking out some coin here. The 120 film costs more than the 35mm film, the developing costs a fraction more and the most awful part is that instead of a glorious 36 shots coming back you get at most 12 (square shots) or 16 (rectangle shots) with the holgas. My model came with a black plastic insert that let's you change the sizes, I just happen to love the square format so I decided to lose 4 shots for it. Another thing is that holgas due to lack of exposure control leave you with the large possibility of some terrible shots so you could potentially find yourself being upset about wasted money/time/expectations :p

So my advice so far (I taken two rolls so I'm definitely no expert) is that b&w is the bomb but that could be because my colour roll came out horrid :p lol. Will blog about that one in the days to come :)

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Canon EOS 3 - T-MAX B&W film

Okay it's time for some black and white film. Now the problem with black and white film is that it requires a different processing to colour film so my local shopping centre lab was unable to process it as they don't have the equipment. After sending it off online to get it processed the roll ended up coming to just under 50 bucks *gasp*. Luckily the Australian lomography site has just started offering processing and they can do all types and offer a much more reasonable price. I sounds like their spokesperson but really I'm just happy to not have to pay a crazy price!

Now all I can say about black and white film is you can't really go wrong. I had a feeling this would be the case. As long as you make sure the shot you're taking has strong contrasts or is interesting because you can't rely on pretty colours to save the day. 

I'm not even going to do the stats on this as the whole roll came out fine except for a few shots where the scene lacked depth. The T-MAX also comes in 100 speed film and up until recently they also offered 3200 but have since stopped production. Kodak also makes a TRI-X b&w film which is meant to be even more forgiving then the t-max aka you can't stuff it up if you over or underexposed it! They also do a BW400 which according to the kodak site gives creamy tones.  Definitely some future films for me to play with :)

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