First 3 seem fine Chris, but the second 3 looks like some vision of a scary place!
Thanks Peter. This is only the second roll of Redscale I've tried (bought an expired 3-pack at the Photography Show a year or so ago). I'm not at all sure I like the effect. However, it is supposed to be exposed somewhere from EI 50 to EI 200; the latter tends to be quite red, while EI 50 gets more greens and a bit less of a scary place vibe. I think I might have exposed it at something like EI 400 or 800! I hope that's the explanation for the depths of Hades look. I need to do more tests on the meter in that Pentax ME!
I like it. I know ICM gets a lot of
hate dis-popularity but I really like the natural colours, composition and (tongue firmly in cheek) bokeh!
I also really like the redscale images. I back ordered some purple stuff on their site a while ago (no idea when it'll arrive) just for fun.
I'm dragging myself slowly to a new way of thinking at the moment that the perfection offered by high resolution DSLRs is really the antithesis of what photography is about. Sharpness and dynamic range are holy grails to camera manufacturers. No one can make mistakes any more. No one can "try" anything without a camera trying to auto-correct and "fix in post". I enjoy your images - and most of the images in this thread - because that's
not the case here.
I don't just like for the sake of liking. More plz.
Thanks Ian. I'm really enjoying the ICM stuff, partly because of the reasons you mention, also partly because of the sheer unpredictability of it. It's definitely an area where using film is a disadvantage (and certainly expensive). I look at a subject and try to work out how to wiggle or wave or move the camera to try to get an effect, trying to remember that it's the light bits overpainting the dark bits, moving in the opposite direction to the camera movement etc. But, like all film photography, there's no instant feedback, and the cost is at least £6 per 36 shots (assuming I'm using essentially free film). By the time I get the images back it's very hard to remember what movements I made. Often it's quite hard to recognise the subjects (but I try to remember they're only starting points for the final image)! So it's expensive and hard to learn. I did contact one of the wiggling camera specialists (Valda Bailey), and she thought it wouldn't really work with film as the error rate is so high; I think she takes hundreds of shots to get a useful one.
OTOH, I thought, that's what so many digital photographers do anyway; maybe the film aspect will make me concentrate harder and result in a better success rate... yes, I know, delusions of competency here, let alone grandeur!
The roll I did earlier this year was in response to the "abstract" challenge. This roll was in response to needing to shoot an expired roll, and remembering the earlier one. I did shoot a couple of rolls a year or so ago, too. I do enjoy it. But I suspect I've now covered the easy bits (the ICM cliches, if you like), and getting more interesting shots is going to be increasingly difficult.
I seem to remember trying some colour shots with a deep red filter and getting deep red shots without having to buy a red biased film, not that one existed at the time I did the experiment. So perhaps cheap colour film and a red filter would be the way to go?
Like the pictures though.
Thanks Peter, too. I suspect the red filter and cheap colour film might well give similar results to these. Not quite sure if shooting at lower EI (so over exposing) would give the same results with a red filter, but that's because I'm not really quite sure I understand everything that's going on (other than the light going through the film first, reducing the strength of the non-red parts of the spectrum; presumably over exposing allows more greens and blues to get to the emulsion layers, but would that happen with a filter, too?).