After proving to myself that my Nikomat FT2 could actually take basic photographs, I began conducting a number of experiments and ‘field trips‘ to explore what it’s like taking film photographs for real – which proved to be very enjoyable and offer a lot of learnings !
Looking for sea creatures
I remember seeing a photo on the internet showing these abstract shapes in the Poulaphouca Reservoir waters around the quaint little town of Blessington, Co. Wicklow. They looked like strange, mythical sea creatures … so I thought I’d bring along my FT2, and see how it would handle a real-life, proper photography challenge.
Now I know what the fuss was about … when the water level is low, the old tree stumps are exposed above the water line, looking like very bizarre elephant and octopus shapes !
Of course photographing these with a manual focus FT2 and some Kodak Gold 200 speed film proved to be a learning moment for sure !
- Strange organic objects with no real pattern …
- Quaint rowing boats …
- Lots of shiny water … reflections …
- Dark forests …and distant mountains … layers …
- Bright skies with fluffy clouds …
Decisions decisions decisions
So how do you go about photographing the roots & trunk of a half-submerged ancient tree … ? This proved to be a lot of fun, if anybody saw me … crouching, bending, leaning this way, leaning that way … looking up, looking down … I looked certifiably mad 😉
The old secret of walking around your subject and getting different viewpoints, and seeing what resonates with you was the key to success here 🙂
I have to admit it was enjoyable … I never tried photographing under a tree, or lining up tree stumps so they pointed somewhat to a distant mountain peak, let alone walking around a rowing boat, looking for the ‘right angle’ …
Of course the issue of managing my shutter speed, as I sought more depth of field, made it’s presence felt … glad I brought my tripod along, as there was no way I was able to hand-hold a few of these photos.
Lessons learned
For me, this field trip proved that getting the correct exposure was very tricky – the waters were dark, the sky was bright, the shore line a bright gravel … a lot of variables to consider !!
With the FT2’s rudimentary center-weighted metering and manual exposure mode only, it was only when I reviewed my negatives & scans did I notice a few important things:
- At this stage of my journey I hadn’t encountered the concept of colour as a guide to exposure compensation … so some of my frame exposures were way off, as I blindly trusted that simply getting the FT2 meter needle in the center would suffice …
- If you’re photographing dark green trees, regardless of what the meter says, you’ll probably want to darken the image a little
- Similarly, if you’re photographing a body of water, it’s actually darker than it looks …
- Likewise, if you’re photographing white & blue striped boats, just because the needle is in the middle doesn’t mean your exposure is right … you’ll probably need to brighten the image
- I also noticed that the sky kept creeping into a lot of my frame, so I had to guesstimate how much I needed to manually compensate my shutter speed by … no histogram here !
Some of these items wouldn’t have been a big deal with digital, because I would have been using RAW files, so any mistakes with exposure were almost certainly recoverable. With 35mm film, I was quickly learning that you must never underexpose, otherwise you’ll be looking at muddy, flat, yucky images … with not a lot of room for fixing it afterwards.
All in all – these were solid learnings from the get-go, and things that have stood to me since, even when using digital.
Of course, an ice cream cone, and a quick ramble along the canal at Sallins to use up the remainder of the film was necessary …
Join me on my next blog post ! Paul.
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