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Serendipity
By jorsillo | July 4, 2009
Who says film is dead? Oh wait, I think I said that. Well, that wasn’t my first time being wrong and I’m sure it wont be my last. In search of some new inspiration, I have been looking for ways to emulate the dead but not forgotten Polaroid Type 55 pos/neg film. I loved that film and shot a fair amount of it back in the day. Its now discontinued and the last remaining stock is highly coveted, selling for upwards of $200 per box on ebay. Checking out a Polaroid thread on flickr, I saw a post about someone getting similar results with Fuji instant film FP-100B. The results looked pretty awesome and had some (but not all) of that Type 55 magic and the process as described looked easy enough. So today I trucked my ass up to Freestyle in Hollywood. Talk about nostalgia. That place was a regular hangout back in the Trade Tech days. Not much has changed there, except they must sell a bazillion Holgas, cause there were piles of them in every corner of the store. I raced back home, dug out the trusty dusty old Speed Graphic, and started shooting away. You can’t imagine the culture shock this was for me. First of all, I had no idea how to expose the film. The Speed Graphic does not have a built in light meter… The film is rated at ISO 100, but the instructions I read mentioned rating it at 50 or even 32. Math, ugh. Focusing (under a dark cloth), closing the shutter, cocking the shutter all felt so odd I had to pull out the D3 just to make sure it was indeed 2009. Even loading the film had me double checking the instruction manual, but soon enough I had prints and alkaline developer goop flying everywhere. I spent the afternoon and 20 sheets of film experimenting with variations of exposure, development and clearing methods to get this one image. But it was FUN, probably the most fun I have had image making in a long time. Sure I made a mess of the kitchen and probably have chemical burns on at least three fingers, but damn what a way to spend an afternoon. By the way, some may argue that the image quality is not worth all the trouble. The truth is I have spent the last several years trying to emulate this look in Photoshop. Sure I don’t have any semblance of control, but isn’t that why they call them ‘happy’ accidents?
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July 4th, 2009 at 5:57 am
[...] Originally posted here: Serendipity [...]
July 4th, 2009 at 7:48 am
[...] [...]
July 4th, 2009 at 8:33 am
[...] Serendipity , originally uploaded by Joseph Orsillo . Who says film is dead Originally posted here: Serendipity [...]