After a more than 20 year break from taking anything much more than ‘happy snaps’ photography has started to reemerge as a very important part of my life.

I swore I’d never shoot analogue again – digital is so much easier and cheaper – but my mother handing the Pentax K1000 that my grandfather gave me when I was 13 (I’m 55, the camera had been at the back of a cupboard at my parents’ house for 30 or more years) has rekindled my love of film.

I’ve been experimenting all sorts emulsions, trying to find the ones that speak to me, and fit my view of the way the world should look. This journey is far from over, but I’m finding that for colour the current front-runner that I’m regularly loading, in both 35mm and 120, is Ektar 100.

It’s colour and tonal range seem to fit what I’m trying to achieve and unlike shooting digital RAW, I don’t seem to want to do much fiddling in post-production with the resulting scans. I haven’t printed anything analogue yet, but I’m sure that’s just around the corner.

Maybe it’s something to do with light in SE Australia – I’m based in Melbourne – and the way Ektar is recording it that suits me, although I’ve shot a few rolls in European summer as well, for similar results. The landscapes were shot near Kyneton in Victoria, somewhere I spend a lot of time with a camera in my hands, and I’m enjoying documenting the way the landscape changes season to season.

These images were taken on my Hasselblad 503CX with a Zeiss Sonnar 150 f/4 lens. The majority of images I’m capturing with this setup are portraits & landscapes, and Ektar’s colours are, for my eyes, true to expectations. I’ve shot a bit of Fuji as well and its colours don’t seem to suit me.

And another of my rediscovered joys of analogue photography is having to shoot an extra frame or two of ‘something’ to finish a roll that you want to develop … I don’t think anyone would recommend my Hasselblad setup for action shots, but sometimes things turn out a little better than you think they might,

~ Nick Orloff

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One response to “5 Frames… With Kodak Ektar 100 (EI 100 / 120 format / Hasselblad 503CX)”

  1. Beautiful shots. I recently acquired a 503CXi, which I am in love with. I’m currently burning through a few rolls of Ilford B&W film to get my head around the camera, and then it’s on to some Ektar 100.

 

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