The 52 Project, Week 33: Kittens!

In photography, like anything else, there's a time and place for everything. Some days I'm feeling intense about photography, therefore I bring out the 8x10. Other days its playing around with Polaroids. This week, though all shot on the Hasselblad, is far from being serious business.

Lauren getting a handful of cute. ^_^

A flickr friend of mine, Claygrl, said it best:

"I am not a cat fan, but I did hear a voice in my head say 'Oooh, kittens'."

Cat lover or dog lover, everyone seems to have a soft spot for adorable little kittens. Luckily for me, my parents always have a fresh batch of barn kittens lying around waiting to be photographed. They're not "crazy cat people" yet, but I often fear they are getting there. >__<

This little guy had a cold back then, he's fine now.

This weeks photos were all taken with one of my new low-light favorites, Ilford Delta 3200. This roll was hand processed in Kodak XTOL in a dilution of 1:1, to give the shadows a little extra time to come up, while keeping highlights in check.

*Insert LOLCats-worthy captioning here*

So, aside from testing the film, why 3200 speed film?

Simply put, kittens, puppies, children, and all things youthful tend to move quickly, and with little regard to the fact that you want to take a picture. Once your shutter speed falls below 1/125th of a second, your chances for any sharpness in these little fuzz balls are gone. Cranking up the speed of your film, on top of whipping out some fast glass, is really the only way to stop them right in their tracks. And considering the time of day these shots were taken, about 30 minutes to sunset, being able to snag f/4 @ 1/250th of a second was pretty good!

Closeup filters + tiny kitten = always adorable

Something Good: Got to work with a cute girl, cute kittens, and got a some usable material to boot.

Something Bad: Looking at the tone curve of these images after scanning, the push development may have been a little long. The tone curve was very clumped up in the mid tones with a lot of expansion needed towards the ends. In darkroom terms, I would need to add about 1/2 grade of filtering plus extra print processing time to get the blacks and whites I wanted in the image.

Something Learned: For a 3200 speed film, Ilford Delta has some really nice grain! Upon further review, Delta films are Ilford's signature brand of "T grained" (tabular grained) emulsions. These are comaprable to Kodak TMax 100, 400, and 3200. And coupled with a developer made for push processing such as XTOL, you've got yourself a winning combination.

Next Week: New Year, new gear. Stay tuned!

The 52 Project, Week 27: Winnie the Pooh & Katie Too!

The last of the series of Hasselblad images from my little two week excursion, this week features one aspect of film that I've really yet to embrace...grain. If you can't tell what I mean from the thumbnails, just click them to see a bigger size, it should then become much more apparent.

Tigger, Piglet, and Winnie the Pooh...kind

After hanging out in NYC with Mike and Duane from the Film Photography Podcast, I made my way out to Amherst, MA to visit a good friend of mine, Katie O'Neil. She's a jack of all trades: horse trainer, rider, pre-vet student, film photography enthusiast (you're welcome Katie), and even a licensed Zamboni driver. As of Feb. 2011, she's in Ireland interning with a horse stable having the time of her life;color me jealous. During my brief visit with her, I managed to stay over for a fun Halloween party at her hometown employer, Lonebirch Farms.

For Halloween, horse enthusiasts pull out all the stops. Not only do they dress up, but so do the horses. Katie herself dressed up as Piglet, with her dog Maggie as Winnie the Pooh, and her horse as Tigger. Its all cute and fun, until you get roped into painting a horse. >__<

A witch, her horse, and jack-in-the-box hubby.

Increasing grain = decreasing sharpness :(

Did I mention what my biggest pet peeve was?

A maiden/damsel and her trusty steed/unicorn.

Something Good: For ISO 3200 film shot at 3200, the shots are more than usable, with decent shadow detail and well controlled highlights. These even look good optically printed as 10x10's.

Something Bad: Ilford Delta 3200 isn't cheap, and at times is more expensive per format than even high speed color film. Also, it's available only in 35mm and 120, sorry older and large formats.

Something Learned: Diluted XTOL is the way to go for sharpness in very high speed shooting situations. Its ability to keep the grain patterns tight and shadow detail present are phenomenal! Be sure to check out the scans at full size to see for yourself.

Next Week: The large format side of this trip. To call these shots a fresh persepective is an understatement!