For a good while I’ve wanted to visit Crosby Beach with my Hasselblad 501cm medium format film camera to shoot sunset on slide film. If you follow my blog and vlog on YouTube you may recall the Slide Film shoot I had on Ainsdale Beach in 2019. I tend to learn towards Negative Film for my film photography. Protra400 is my favourite colour negative film. I’m also partial to black and white film too and at the time of writing this I’m a few shots into a roll of HP5.
Anyway, this evening I headed down to the Beach with a view to catching some form of colourful end to the day at the exact spot where the River Alt meets the Irish Sea. I’ve scouted this location a few times in the past recently in search of new compositions on a familiar place. So, this evening I was determined to get out and see what I can achieve with slide film. My previous attempts at shooting slide film have, if I’m honest, been a failure. I don’t know if that’s because I’m conditioned to using my Hasselblad X1D medium format digital camera with a huge Dynamic Range or if I’m used to negative film that gives me a lot more latitude, but I have, in my own opinion consistently failed when it comes to creating a nice image on slide film.
This evening I wanted to conduct an experiment. Where I use this roll of Provia 100F as a test roll to see how the light falls and is captured in this kind of setting. Here are my results with comments below showing the setting I wrote down after each shot. All images were taken with my Hasselblad 501cm and a 150mm F4 lens. The first two images were the last two exposures of a roll of Portra 400 I had loaded up before I switched to Provia 100F.
Portra 400 with 80mm F2.8 lens as unknown F stop (prob F22)
My friend Sarah who I shot with tonight – Portra 400 with 80mm F2.8 lens as F2.8
Here are my notes from the shoot tonight that I wrote down during the shoot.
1/500th
1/250th
1/125th
The series of shots below included my Circular Polariser and 0.9 Graduated Filter.
I sometime take snaps of the camera setup so I can recall the exposure settings.
1/125th with Circular Polariser and 0.9 Graduated ND Filter.
1/125th
1/60th
1/30th
To say I’m disappointed with these photographs is an understatement. I see 2 problems with my efforts.
1. My process behind the camera is not methodical enough. Being with Sarah and chatting confused me and I can’t seem to focus on more than one thing at once, I lost my way as the sun set, I was flustered. Need more practice.
2. My expectations of what is possible with Slide Film and how I’m applying it needs refining. I know I can do better but my expectations need readjusting.
To round off the night as we left I made these photos on my iPhone. Who needs film hey….
