By this time last year, I had shot 8 rolls of film. This year is off to a slow start. We haven’t had a bad winter but what bad weather we’ve had has aligned with the days I’ve had time to go out and take photos. Also, for some of the times I’ve had to go out, I’ve used my new Nikon Z fc. Despite these reasons, I’m a little surprised and disappointed that I didn’t get my first roll of film developed until mid-March.
The good news is that my first roll turned out pretty good. I had a roll of Lomography Color 800 loaded in my Minolta X-700. I’ve been wanting to try shooting film one-stop overexposed. I had read or seen that suggestion somewhere, the rationale being that recovering dark shadows is difficult so it’s better to err on the side of overexposing since there’s more latitude for darkening highlights. Plus, one stop overexposed isn’t that dramatic.
Although I had never shot Lomography Color 800 before, I decided to give overexposing a try so I shot the entire roll with my camera set at ISO 400.
Actually, I took one shot at 800 in order to see what different one-stop overexposed would make. The different is noticeable but not significantly so.
I shot the roll over the course of 4 different walks, all with my MD 50mm f/1.7 lens. The first was a short neighborhood walk.
The 2nd walk was a longer one to Columbus Blvd. near the Delaware River. As with the first walk, it was cold but bright and sunny.
Our next 2 walks were over my long birthday weekend. We went out on the Friday and Saturday of that weekend, and I took photos with both my Minolta X-700 and my Nikon Z fc. I wrote about the Z fc photos in my post about that weekend.
The Friday walk was on a cold but sunny day. It started out as a simple neighborhood walk, but we ended up taking a longer than expected route to 30th Street Station. However, the photos I took with my Minolta X-700 were all on the early part of the walk closer to home.
I finished the roll the next day on our walk to Chinatown.
It certainly felt rewarding to finally finish a roll of film in 2022. I have some catching up to do, and I hope spring settles in soon.
I did like the results I got with the Lomography Color 800 as well as with overexposing the roll. I plan on continue that experiment with different film and camera combinations.
Leave a Reply