A short walk with the Nikkormat FTn, the 50 mm f/2 and a roll of Lomo Babylon 13

In May, I decided to stock up on all the film I thought I would shoot over the summer months, and so, imagining the sunny conditions ahead, I added a number of rolls of low ISO films to my shopping cart. As things turned out, this summer was so wet I didn't break out the first roll of Lomo Babylon 13 until the middle of September. The other day, I loaded a roll into the Nikkormat FTn with the 50mm f/2 attached. The meter on my Nikkormat is still working well after half a century and, believe it or not, it goes down all the way to ASA12. So, I was all set.

There are many reasons to choose these types of emulsions beyond just the fun factor, of course. Back in the day, photographers like Lewis Baltz were attracted to super slow films because of, among other things, their fine grain structure. This would allow them to achieve the larger print sizes associated with medium format gear using more compact 35mm cameras. Another reason to shoot with these films, a reason that is popular these days, is to facilitate the use of wider apertures under daylight conditions without having to use a neutral density filter. 

I shot the silhouette of the mobile wide open at f/2 to get an idea about the out of focus rendering of the lens. Pretty okay, and similar to other lenses of that time period, I would say.

You can't judge a film on the basis of a single roll, hopefully the sunny conditions will hold for a while longer. But so far, there is not much to complain about here. The only real frustration was the high degree of curl to the negatives. It'll be fun to go out with other camera and lens combinations and see what happens.

Raymond Moore, a Nikkormat FT, and a roll of weird film

 

About two weeks ago, I came across a YouTube video about the life of British landscape photographer Raymond Moore. It looked like a copy of an old VHS recording of a television broadcast from the 1980s. Two things immediately jumped out at me: one, Raymond Moore is a damn fine photographer whose work deserves a wider (current) audience; two, money was not plentiful for him back in the 80s and he was working with a Nikkormat FT camera. In other words, he was producing great photographic art with some pretty basic equipment, even by the standards of the time. These days, a decent working copy of a Nikkormat FT can be had for $40. You know where this is going. I bought one that also came with a copy of the old version of the 50mm f/2 lens for $100. One fine morning, I grabbed a roll of something called Washi Z, a 400 speed near IR sensitive film. After shooting the roll on a hike through the woods, I made the fateful decision to process it in a monobath solution. The first sign of possible strangeness ahead was when I poured out the monobath, which had changed color from clear to bright yellow. The negatives were pretty thin and contrasty with a short tonal scale, not unlike a film from the 19th century. I decided to embrace the aesthetic, and, in the end, ended up with a set of images that I think are pretty cool.

Here's to shooting in good light this weekend!