It’s Christmas. I hope you’re having a good one. We did our holiday on Saturday, with roast duck and a few friends over. And while crouching down to pick up an errant bit of rutabaga and toss it in the bin, I threw my back out quite spectacularly. Don’t get old, kids.
A couple days before that, I took a bunch of cameras for a walk. The results were, well. Mixed. I don’t hate any of it, but I’m not in love, either. Mostly, the weather was against me. But I still got some good stuff. I also got a lot of blurry stuff, but that’s what happens when you put 35mm film into a 127 Brownie.
I’ve sort of decided that I’m going to start leaning into the way the film warps when I do this. I’ve always cropped it out, but I’m not actually sure why. There aren’t any adapters for putting 35mm into 127 cameras, because the canister itself is too big to go into the camera. Instead, I have to respool the film onto a metal 127 spool, and load it in a dark bag. There’s nothing in the camera keeping the film straight, which lets it sort of go all wonky.
People have asked how I know to advance the frames. The answer is basically trial and error. The first roll I did like this, I hadn’t advanced the film far enough, and all the frames were overlapped. The second, I over-compensated, and lost a lot of shots to caution. Turning the knob three times on both my 127 Brownies seems to be the perfect middle ground.
I get really nice panoramas from my Sawyer’s Nomad. Funny thing about this camera is it’s a 620. I have a couple of 620 cameras, and they are all a pain in the ass. The film is exactly the same as 120, but the spools are different. So every time, I have to respool the film in order to use it. Except with this one. This is the only camera I have that can handle Lomography’s fat rolls without issue. The 35mm to 120 adapter fits with room to spare. And since I have other 620/120 cameras I like better, this camera has pretty much exclusively become a vehicle for sprocket panorama shots. The same as with the other ones, it was a bit of trial and error to work out how far to advance the frames, but one and a half turns of the knob seems to be the sweet spot.
I get much better results from these shenanigans in the summer, when the sun is blinding. Also, I’m really bad at remembering that I don’t have the entire visible frame available to me, so often the thing I was trying to photograph winds up not actually in the shot. I think next I want to put some 127 film into one of my 620/120 cameras, for some good panoramas there. Because right now, I only get 4×4″ squares from that.
The same day, I also took out my H35N out, loaded up with Lomography Metropolis. I’m incredibly not sold on this film, and I’m not sure if it doesn’t like the cheap plastic camera, or the light this time of year, or what. I’ve shot a few rolls of this though, and haven’t ever got anything I liked out of it. I’ve also heard mixed opinions from Metropolis. I’ve seen some people say that it shouldn’t be shifting colour like that, but I’m not sure what to make of the fact that half of this roll was pink, and half was blue. I’ve got a few more rolls though. So I’ll keep messing with it.
Earlier this year, I put a roll of expired HP 200 film into the Nomad. Now, this has confused me greatly, because I shot one roll in one of my Minoltas, and the photos came out brilliantly. I thought, great! This is film that I can get some good mileage out of. I was still lab developing at that time, so I sent out the roll, and got back deep fried scans that had been improperly cropped. I’d given up on it there and then, because surely they had better equipment than I do. But when I was scanning the rolls from last week’s shenanigans, I decided balls to it. Let’s scan that one as well. And
I mean. They’re not what I’d call vibrant colour, but there’s actually recognisable images on there. If anything, I think this is my favourite roll from the Nomad. Even considering I hadn’t sealed up the red window well enough.
And then as a little treat to myself, I got a Holga Micro 110. And then for some batshit insane reason, decided to test it with black and white film. I am so bad at black and white. Out of the entire roll, I got a single barely-usable image.
Perfectly sunny day. I’ve no idea why I’m so bad at black and white.
I’ve got a Lomography Four-Lens camera coming in soon as well. I can’t wait to mess about with that.