EightyOne

This colour roll had a mixture of photos from Gran Canaria and also a few from our wedding in August!

In the middle is one photo of friends taken before a gig in Brighton’s Coalition using a yellow flash.

The shots in Gran Canaria have come out really sharp and bright, while those taken in the UK are slightly under-exposed due to the overcast weather or use of flash and slower film (160 ISO).

There are a couple of weird double-exposures in there, too, and the same loose film exposure problems I had with the last couple of rolls.

These were taken using a Holga 120CFN with Fuji Pro 160C 160 ISO colour film and a 6×6cm mask.

I dug out a couple of Jane’s old 35mm cameras from the loft, and plan to have a play around with those when I get the chance. She has an Olympus Trip 35 and a Petri Color 35, which are both awesome in their ’60s Japaneseness.

Here are all twelve photos from my third roll shot in my Holga. This film also fell victim to a trapped sponge, and show varying degrees of damage caused by accidental exposure. This has the odd good as well as bad effect.

These were taken using a Holga 120CFN with Fuji Pro 160C 160 ISO colour film and a 6×6cm mask.

The remaining six photos from roll two are now up on Flickr.

These photos were shot on a Holga 120CFN using Ilford HP5+ 400 ISO black & white film and a 6×6cm mask.

Most of the photos are scratched, as in the previous bunch, and the last two have light streaks caused by the piece of sponge that got wound up in the film, causing it to bulge beyond the sides of the spool.

I’ve put the first six photos from the second roll of film shot in my Holga up on Flickr.

These photos were shot on a Holga 120CFN using Ilford HP5+ 400 ISO black & white film and a 6×6cm mask.

A couple of them show signs of scratched film, and I’ve posted one of them for completeness more than anything else. More to come!

I’ve just taken receipt of prints for Holga rolls numbers 2 and 3 (black & white Ilford HP5+ and colour Fuji Pro 160C respectively), and the results are, er, interesting. To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect from these two films, as I had a bit of a camera mishap that caused them both to come out oddly bulging from their spools.

There is a phenomenon known in the biz as ‘fat rolls’. Rather than referring to oversized baked goods or excess tissue stored around the person, this term is used to describe when an exposed roll of film protrudes from the edges of the spool, usually causing light leakage when the roll is removed from the camera. Often, this happens when there isn’t adequate tension on the film to keep it neat, tidy and tight.

In my case, however, this was caused by something altogether different. More recent ‘N’ Holgas have two pieces of sponge glued in the areas of the camera where the two spools sit to help hold them in place and keep enough tension on the film to ensure it sits flat and exposures stay in focus. The sponges came away from the body of the camera, and ended up wound up in roll number two (the black & white Ilford one).

I was able to remove one of the pieces of sponge, as it was right at the end of the roll, and foolishly replaced it in the feeder spool compartment before loading roll number three (the colour Fuji Pro one). Of course, it then ended up wound up in that roll. I’m not sure what caused this to happen, but perhaps the Canarian heat caused the adhesive to melt (I was on holiday in Gran Canaria and it was over 30 degrees Celsius around midday), or maybe it was caused by some over-tension I experienced when winding on roll number two. Perhaps it was a combination of the two, or perhaps one problem was caused by the other.

Whatever the cause, I ended up with two sets of damaged negatives. Almost all of my black & white prints have rows of black dots and trails on them, which it seems are the result of scratches in the compound on the film (surely caused by the over-tension). The last couple of exposures also have large light streaks, which are probably the result of the dislodged sponge causing the end of the film to protrude from the edge of the spool.

The colour film was far more seriously affected by the roaming sponge. There are no scratches on the negatives this time, but only the first four exposures of the twelve escaped without serious artefacts. Still, the resulting images were actually better than I expected. When I handed the films in for developing, the chap behind the counter didn’t hold much hope for my scruffy-looking roll of Fuji, saying that he wouldn’t go ahead with prints if we had nothing but fog.

Although the damage was severe, it has actually led to some very interesting photos, with exposure numbers printing through, and an almost perfect framing of the lighthouse of Maspalomas. There is another with what is undeniably the silhouette of a piece of sponge in the middle!

At first I was disappointed that my photos had been damaged so badly, but on reflection, and after comments from fascinated friends, I definitely consider some of the results to be happy accidents. It’s all part of the fun of Holgagraphy, of course. :)

I made sure to get the negatives scanned and put on CD this time, so some of them will be on Flickr very soon.