As I mentioned yesterday, I finished off a roll of film that had been sitting in my Ricoh. The roll was Lomography 400 ISO colour negative film, so the colours and contrast are pretty neat. I think it’s going for a cross-processed sort of feel. These are some of my favourite photos off the roll. I could say I’m doing a themed thing with feet, but I think these photos are almost a year apart (though it may just be that the theme is on going).

(I cheated and made this one black and white in Photoshop)

I have to admit, I’ve been a sucker for cross processing since before I knew lomography was a big thing. And there’s just something endearing about the variability that comes with a cheap plastic camera and slide film (or a nice camera and slide film). So I was intrigued when I saw that you can get the Diana lens (a plastic lens for the new 120 cameras) for Canon SLRs, and what do you know, with my birthday and all, I was lucky enough to get one!

It’s very hard to focus, I suppose that being one of its main selling points, but does take some interesting photos. The cool thing is that since it’s on my Canon, I can shoot raw and then have a lot more play with the image.

I could just take every photo with it and pretend I’m living in a dream sequence!

So miracle of miracles, I did not ruin my entire roll of film from Saturday! I’m actually incredibly impressed, but there were about 10 photos that turned out. Not too bad for a roll of 24 exposures. I love the way my Ricoh takes photos. One of the most satisfying things is how you can feel the shutter move when you take a photo. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Canon, but my Ricoh will always have a very special place in my heart. I’ve posted my favourite photos in my portfolio but since it’s a lot of work to click on the link, I figured I’d put them in this post too.

This one was Mike’s favourite

This one was my favourite shot when I took it

It was this one and the dandelion one that I was scared of losing (they were near the end of the roll)

This one shows off how burnt some of the film was

After the little mishap on Saturday with the film (who knew it could rip?) I decided to jump right back on the horse and get two new rolls of fake black and white film. What I mean by “fake” is that it’s C-41 (ie. colour film) but slightly different in that it shoots in doesn’t have colour. This probably seems a little backwards and you may be thinking “well, that’s pretty black and white then, isn’t it?”. Truth be told though, true black and white film has a different composition and is actually processed a different way. The general process is the same, but there aren’t as many steps. I’m not 100% sure of the differences though, since the only hand developing I’ve ever done was with true black and white film and not the fake stuff.

So I was looking to get some real stuff, but it turns out that no where in town will process it! One place will, but they send it away and it takes a long time and they charge an arm and a leg for it – especially considering that it’s a much simpler process relative to colour processing. Of course colour processing now is done primarily on big fancy machines that do everything for you. Thus now I am trying this stuff for the first time. It’s Kodak Professional BW400CN, 36 exposures. We’ll see how it turns out compared to the black and white photos I have shot previously.

Another cross processed photo. This one is definitely one of my favourites off that roll. I’ve been busy with end of the year things, so please excuse my flakyness with the blog.

This was Mike’s experiment using the bulb shutter setting on the Ricoh. I’m actually impressed it turned out, since the batteries died during the taking of this photo. Not that batteries are actually 100% necessary for the Ricoh (it’s that oldschool). I’m also impressed how steady Mike’s hands are.