A while back, I had this fancy little idea. I decided to try my luck with black & white photography. Honest to goodness B&W photography.

Now, as you may or may not know, one of the most important *technical* aspects of photography is exposure. When the shutter button is pressed, the shutter snaps open for a predetermined amount of time, usually a fraction of a second, before it closes shut again. This "exposes" the film to light from the outside world. Which is all fine & dandy since the film wrapped around the innards of your camera is coated with chemicals that change color when exposed to light.

Unfortunately, if you don't get the exposure "right", i.e. there's too much or too little light, your picture will turn out to be too bright or too dark. This is where shutter speed comes in. If there's not enough light, the shutter can be adjusted to stay open for a longer period of time. If there's too much light, the shutter can be modified to open & close in a shorter period of time.

Luckily, most modern cameras usually come with auto focus/aperture adjustments, making photography comparatively easier. Not-so-luckily, the camera that I own is a dinosaur by comparison. It's heavy, it literally "kicks" when taking a picture, and Bob knows every single adjustment needs to be set manually. Aperture, focus, shutter speed, and even the speed of the film. The only electronic part in the whole machine is the light-meter which, for the most part, seems content to inform me there's not enough light. And even after all that, the camera seems to have a mind of it's own about what to shoot and what not to shoot. That and the focus is slightly off, so what's in or out of focus is a matter of luck, more than anything else.

Then, there's the speed of the film itself. (Or, technically speaking, the speed of the photosensitive chemical coating the film itself.) The standard films (usually categorized as ISO 400) are all the rage with tourists & party-goers alike. They're fast enough to work under most lighting conditions with a big fat margin for errors. Unfortunately, the pictures have a tendency of coming out looking grainy. The next best thing, commonly categorized as ISO 200 is a bit picky about it's working conditions. (It won't work without a decent amount of light.) But then again, it gets sharper results than it's ISO 400 cousin. (There's also an abomination that goes by the name of ISO 800, it seems to enjoy mugging tourists for some reason or another... but that's another story.)

As luck would have it, B&W film had an ISO of 100. Basically, it's a bitch when it comes to lighting conditions. On top of that, I could not find a place to properly process the film for me; not event store where I bought the B&W film from.

So...

- Slow film with steep lighting requirements? Check.
- Manual Camera with a mind of it's own? Check.
- Inability to find a place that actually processes B&W film? Check.

Being the genius that I am, I instructed the nice folks at the photo lab to process the B&W film through their one & only color film processor. The resulting pictures look old. OLD old. Which is... kind of nice in their own little way, I suppose.

BTW, the ones I posted here are scanned & and posted as-is.

In no specific order, I present:

Down by the River 01 : [link]
Down by the River 02 : [link]
Down by the River 03 : [link]
Down by the River 04 : [link]
Down by the River 05 : [link]
At the Ferry Dock : [link]
Gone Fishing : [link]
Brick Oven : [link]
Thousand Man March : [link]
TVC Shoot : [link]

That's all. XD