Adventures in sweet photography

What do you do when you’ve got yourself a large format camera? Why, take some pictures of sweets of course! I ended up taking three versions, trying to get the exposure right. I’m using Instax film which becomes much less sensitive when the light levels go down low.

These should serve as useful references if I take more pictures at the same light level. Essentially it looks like the film needs an extra four stops worth of light at this exposure. The top frame was taken using settings suggested by the light meter, then I opened up two stops for each of the successive ones.

I’m very impressed with the level of detail you can get from the film though. I got out my magnifying glass and I could read all the tiny printing on the wrappers.

Proper photographers talk about “reciprocity failure” which is when the film becomes significantly less sensitive at low light levels. This might be something along those lines.

Instax Overdrive

It is quite fun working with chemical photography instead of digital. It behaves in ways you might not expect. If you put too much light on the Instax film it goes dark and then produces a negative of the image. The picture on the left shows this in action. It is supposed to be a multiple exposure of some lights.

The centres of the bulbs should be bright white rather than purple or green. This is due to some chemical reaction or other. People have even managed to create proper looking pictures by shining very powerful flashes onto negative images. Instant photography has made picture taking harder, costlier and more of a lottery in terms of what you get. I love it.

When in doubt, bring the sun with you

A while back I took some instant pictures that were a bit compromised by colour balance of artificial light. I decided that one way to fix this was to bring along a light of my own. A quick search of ebay found me a Hannimex PRO550 along with mounting plate for around 10 quids. I’m going to have to modify the flash cable or find an adapter (the RF70 has a funky 2.5mm socket) but if I use this flash I don’t think I’ll need to worry about artificial light. Plus, as an outfit it looks awesome.

I just hope I don’t blind any of the subjects or give them a suntan they don’t want…..

Enter the Mint RF70

The bloke on the left is asking “What happened to you? Was it drink, drugs or crazy living?”. The bloke on the is replying. “Nothing like that. Instant photography”.

I’m getting my hands on a Mint RF70 camera. This will be even more expensive to feed than the Mint TL70 I got a while back and probably as hard to use. Better start looking for comfortable park benches now.

Another Ugly Camera

A while back I bought a really ugly camera. Now I’ve got another. It’s a Lomo Instant Wide. It arrived today.

Actually, this one looks a lot better to my eyes than the previous one. It is painted plastic with faux leather stuck on, but it’s done with some attempts at style. It’s not new. I had a few fun minutes clearing muck out of the battery compartment to get it to work. But work it does. It’s another large format instant camera. This one has a bit more manual control and a remote control built into the lens cap. I’m looking forwards to taking some pictures with it.

Ugly camera

This is the biggest, ugliest camera I’ve ever bought. I got it for a very good price second hand because the battery compartment has suffered a bit of corrosion. But it works fine. Once I’d figured out the right way to put the batteries in. Most devices put the springs against the negative terminal of the batteries. This doesn’t, leading to a bit of worrying while I worked that out. It’s an instant camera which takes quite large pictures. Hence the size and the ugliness. It comes with a funky close-up lens you can clip on the front so that you can get close to roses. I’m looking forward to taking it out and playing with it. It’s not got as many fun features as the Instant Square I got for Christmas. It doesn’t even have a self timer. But it does make nice large pictures. t