5 Day Black and White Challenge Day 2 – Daffodils
For my 2nd picture in the 5 day black and white challenge, I’m posting an image once more taken on Pan F Plus 50 film. This photograph, very different to yesterday’s, was taken with my Mamiya 645 Pro Medium Format film camera.
The picture sums up, for me, what is so special about film photography. It’s all about the grain in the image. Digital ‘noise’ is so very different. The grain is not so evident at this resolution but looking at the image full size, the grain gives a really lovely texture and a quality to the image that, although it can be mimicked in digital, it can’t be matched. As I’ve said before, I’m not about to sell my Nikon D800 and film is hard work by comparison to digital photography, but I’m finding working with film very satisfying.
I’ve used a very fine grain film, Pan F 50 Plus, for this image. Pan F however, is known for being quite contrasty, see yesterday’s image, with very rich blacks. To counteract the tendency for heavy contrast, with this photograph I set the ASA to 25 rather that 50 on my light meter (leading to slight over-exposure) and pulled the processing, that is, I stopped development before the standard time for the Ilford Ilfosol 3 developer that I was using..
80mm f/4 1/30 sec. ASA 25
Today I’m going to invite Tina of Travels and Trifles to take up the 5 day Black and White Challenge. Tina is of course known for her beautiful (colour) travel photography but there have been some gorgeous black and white images along the way. This is all a bit of fun and there is of course no pressure to take part but I’m seeing some beautiful black and white photography as a result of the challenge and that’s what it’s all about.
Cornwall Photographic 