Over the last year or so I’ve been making the transition back in time to using film rather than my digital’ cameras. In life, I feel I am making a return to a slower and more simple outlook and the return to film for me is part of the process.
I tend to use whatever camera takes me and I have tried a number of film stocks, with mostly Rollei RPX 400 as my go-to emulsion. When the Kosmo Foto Mono was released in 120 format, I decided to get a couple of rolls to both try it out and to support the industry. I’d read that it might be re-rolled Fomapan and having previously used Fomapan 400 in 35mm format and not being too enamoured, it was a risk – but, hey!
I decided that I would use this roll to work on getting to know my Minolta light-meter a bit better also, usually using guesswork based around Sunny 16 in normal practice.
Two locations came to mind. The first a local Botanical Garden here in NW Scotland and the second, my own local area around our house here in Knoydart. I was looking to capture some of the detail of the plants or scenes with my Mamiya C220’s Mamiya Sekor 80mm f/2.8 lens, working to isolate the subject as much as possible by using a shallow depth of field, generally.
I also overexposed by one stop for all the images taken at the Botanical Garden as there was a lot of shade to contend with and I didn’t want to lose detail in the shadow areas. For the images taken here at home, I wanted to really isolate the subject, but also without trying to lose the background entirely.
The film developer I have at the moment is Rodinal and I’m aware of the grain it can produce. Using a ratio of 1:25 dilution and 6 minutes development time at 20 degrees Celcius; one-minute initial agitation and 10 seconds of VERY minimal agitation every minute seems to have controlled the grain and produced some nice images.
Kosmo Foto Mono 100 is a film I will certainly use more of in 120 format in the future.
~ Matt
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