Frugal Film Project – Kevin Dillon – March

For March I made a trip down the road to shoot some classic cars. It was a beautiful sunny day outside, but inside the lighting was another matter. While fine for human eyes, it did not allow for very fast shutter speeds and unfortunately I have chosen ISO 400 to shoot with. This left me with a choice. Do I jack up the ISO to 3200 or do I grab a tripod out of my car? Since a lot of museums do not allow tripods, I opted for pushing the film in an attempt to get something close to what I could hand hold. After having processed the film, I wish I had inquired about tripods or at a minimum, monopods. Especially since the museum was basically empty besides myself?

Subject matter was The National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio…

Film – Ultrafine Xtreme 400 pushed to ISO 3200 in FPP-110 (dilution H, 1:63) and semi-stand developed for 40 minutes @ 68F – temp controlled via sous vide.

Scanner – Epson Perfection 370 Photo – No contrast or sharpness adjustments were applied.

Camera – Minolta SRT-SCII

Lens #1 – Vivitar 28mm f2.8 close focus – Komine

Lens #2 – Soligor 135mm f3.5 (Tokina)

Filter – none

Overall, I’m glad I made the trip for the shoot, but will do things differently if I return. Next time I will definitely inquire about tripods. As for this trip, I am disappointed that many of the negatives were very thin. Perhaps a failure of 50 year old technology (Minolta CLC) in low light? Who knows? Maybe I’ll also opt for a 4 stop push to ISO 6400 and get some wild grain and contrast? For that, I’ll take a more modern SLR that goes to 6400 such as my EOS Rebel Ti or maybe my Pentax ZX-7. A more advanced meter sure wouldn’t hurt. 🙂

I still hope to shoot some portraits soon, hopefully for April if I can arrange it.

You can read more about Kevin here.