It has to be the unpredictable nature of film, you never quite know how the shots are going to turn out until you've developed them. There’s nothing more exciting than pulling negs out of the tank and holding them up to the light to see what you’ve got
Kodak’s T-Max isn’t one of those films that you see constantly thrust into the limelight. It’s elder cousin Tri-X 400 and Ilford’s HP5+ seem to dominate the 400-speed black and white space and rightly so. Tri-X rests on its ability to adapt to nearly any situation and both pushes and pulls, then you have HP5+ with its aesthetically pleasing grain structure and untouchable ability to push while keeping contrast under control.
Film photography can be costly for the casual photographer who only shoots every now and then, or the photographer who never leaves the house without a film camera in hand.
More fortunate photographers get to enjoy film stocks of higher quality, and the rest
have to make do with consumer-grade film stocks.
At the beginning of this year, I set out my usual photography goals. Debrief the successes and failures of the previous year's projects and plan new ones. The biggest failure of 2016 for me was quitting a 365 project half way through, but the reason for that, without going into too much detail, was simply that the act of grabbing an image every day for a year wasn't making me a better photographer, it wasn't inspiring me to tell stories, it was merely a chore I needed to get done and the photos began to reflect that mindset.
With the recent talk that Fujifilm are discontinuing their remaining slide film stocks in 35mm format, it's exciting to hear that as of the end of this year, Kodak are bringing back Ektachrome 100.
I’ll admit something. I’m a lazy shooter. I rarely shoot C-41 anymore because I like processing simply and quick at home, and because of this, Fujifilm Acros really lends itself to how I shoot.
I also predominantly shoot events such as weddings and small corporate jobs to make ends meet, so taking a camera that limits me to 36 exposures when I go out for my day means I am never expected to quickly take out my camera to do small odd jobs for friends and family… As I said I am a very lazy person.
Let’s get this out of the way. If I shoot colour, I’m generally a Kodak guy. Kodak’s Portra 400 and Ektar stocks make up most of my colour repertoire, which, to be fair, is diminishing as I lean toward shooting more and more black and white.
Peter from Ikigai shipped me up a roll of Fuji’s 35mm Industrial 100 – aka Fuji Color 100 – to test out along with a range of films he’d be stocking.