Sunday, September 26, 2021

Intentional camera movement on super slow film

 

Using a slow emulsion such as Lomo Babylon 13 opens up the possibility of shooting wide open on a sunny day, which might be useful for capturing environmental portraits. Another use case for low ISO film is ICM photography. If you stop down the aperture to f/5.6, f/8, or beyond, you often will be shooting at or below 1/15 sec, ideal for blurring water and clouds if you are on a tripod, or doing ICM if that is your cup of tea. Naturally, you are free to adjust your exposures to taste. Camera movements during exposure involve a certain element of chance, so you may end up with many unusable frames at first. For this reason, it might be a good idea to practice using your phone or digital camera to get an idea of the possibilities before blasting through several rolls of film. The lack of apparent grain in the above ICM images added to the overall feel of 'flow', a good match with my artistic intent. I'll be doing more film based ICM work for sure.