What would you think if I told you you could develop film in coffee?
Either you would tell me I’m crazy or you would do what I did – search the internet for it’s validity – and then sign up for the workshop to get your hands dirty! Specialty Color Services of Santa Barbara was the host to this great workshop. It was a $10 investment on my part, but what I got from it was worth way more! Not only did I shoot film for the first time in 2 1/2 years, I used a Holga (long dubbed a ‘toy camera’) medium format plastic camera!
Let me take a few minutes to introduce you to the Holga. The body is plastic, there are no aperture controls except for the back-and-forth switch which shows a picture of clouds in one direction (which ultimately exposes your film at f/8 and is strictly recommended for cloudy days or inside exposing) and a picture of the sun (exposing your film at f/11) in the opposing direction; and focus is obtained through a variety of 4 adjustments: 1 man = 3.25ft, 2 men = 6.25 ft, 8 men = 22ft, and a mountain = 33ft. There is one other switch on the bottom of the camera which allows you to chose a normal exposure or a bulbed exposure. There is also the option to chose frame size or rather the number of frames per roll of film from 12 to 16 or square versus rectangular respectively, depending on the film size mask you insert into the camera. That’s it! That’s all the control you have as the operator!
What else can I tell you about the Holga? Oh yeah – it is notorious for its light leaks, fuzzy and vignetted corners, parallax error and double exposures. I think the possibility for double exposures is greater now than ever before, especially in this digital world where taking multiple shots with continuous burst rates of up to 9 fps is commonplace on many of the DSLRs. Having said that, all of the double exposures in these images were intentional (well, almost all of them) – nothing like having Photoshop in your camera – you don’t even have to increase file size by adding layers! WOO HOO!
This first roll of film was with the Holga straight out of the box. Even though I bought it 2 years ago, it sat in my camera locker untouched all this time. And you will see by the first shot how good but lacking it is: this is Tony Morey of Specialty Color Services (their amazing printer and photography guru) who needed to help me unstick the shutter – a finely tuned mechanism . . . a cheap thin piece of wire disguised as a spring!
So, this first gallery was shot on an expired (June of 2002) roll of Ilford’s Delta 100 Black&White medium format film.
This second roll of film was also expired, though I was trying to load it and keep up with the walking photo tour, so I never did check the exact date of expiration. It is Kodak’s TMax 100.
My last roll of film for the day. It is one I brought from home – FujiFilm’s Fujicolor Pro 160C which expires in August of 2009. During my preliminary research into this development of film in coffee, I had read about the differing effects received by using color film – and apparently you never know exactly what result you will achieve – it all depends on the film type. This one rocks! The cyanotype effect is my favorite!
In my next post, I will discuss how to actually do the developing.
This is a space for visual effects only.