When someone from Saint Petersburg Russia sends you a few rolls of film, I think they have to be shot with something interesting. Thanks to my EMULSIVE Secret Santa last December 2019 (@gyrdin) for these gifts. My smile reached up to my ears when I opened up the package and saw those bunch of BW film rolls, BW prints and of course a box of chocolates. Christmas was really in the air!

I think the classic retro packaging of Fomapan 100 really caught my eye that I decided to shoot this film first. I loaded this roll on a Yashica-635 medium format TLR camera with a Yashikor 80mm f/3.5 fixed lens. This camera has been with me for a year now so I’m already familiar with all of its dials and functions including the intermittent problem at shutter speed’s 1/60 and below.

Previously, I kept metering often that makes me very slow and missed those moments in the streets. I also reviewed all of my old film shots but the keeper frame percentage is really bad in my opinion. With all of my observations, I decided to challenge myself and made it interestingly a fun day of shooting.

Here in Singapore, wet markets are really my favourite place of interest. Since this roll was intended to be shot with people, I started my day by metering the back of my palm using myLightmeter iPhone app since I still don’t have an actual light meter. I measured three lightmeter readings under different lighting scenarios – open sunlight, under the shade and I also took a light meter reading on the over-all area just in case I needed it. I kept these settings in my mind and started roaming around.

It’s a very challenging technique to experiment with since aside from compositions, I have to remember all the settings in my mind and adjusting my settings depending on how the light changes as well as my subjects. After I processed the film at home, I was very happy, surprised and satisfied with how I ended up with this film.

~ Lester

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One response to “5 Frames… With Fomapan 100 Classic (EI 100 / 120 format / Yashica 635)”

  1. Great shots, I love the overall look of this film. I also like the way that you took your meter readings, and got that out of the way, so you could enjoy making these photographs. Good job IMO…

 

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