For my first post on this blog, I wanted to discuss my first experiences with medium format film. I'm very used to instant film such as Instax and Polaroid, and I've dipped my toes into 35mm film a few times, but this year I had my first experiences with medium format (or 120) film and it was fun, and simpler than I expected.
The camera I used was the Agfa Isolette I, which I got from eBay with a case for around £30. It was in excellent condition, with no issues with the bellows, 1/200 as the quickest shutter speed and a focusing system based off of estimating how far away the subject is.
The film of choice was Ilford HP5 Plus, a lovely black and white film with a lot of contrast, and has an ISO of 400. It meant I got a total of 12 6x6 photos.
It was good fun to walk around Herne Bay and use the camera. I had more luck with more landscape type shots, where I could set the distance to infinity, and found it a challenge to shoot with the 1/200 shutter speed, as I'm so used to 1/500 with 35mm film, but I feel like it helped me learn more about film. I took a photo of my fiancé's parents dog and I was definitely off with my distance guess, but that's something I've always been terrible with, but hopefully I'll improve with that as I use film more often, especially this camera. I found that most of the photos came out quite well, but I do wonder about the light metering, as the sky was nice and meant that the subject of the clocktower or houses was quite dark. The quality however, was fantastic. I was so happy to see there were no light leaks, and the quicker shutter didn't really hinder me at all.
I found it that I had to focus more on what type of photo I wanted to take, checking the shutter, aperture and focus distance because I was limited to the 12 photos and I couldn't just look to see how it came out and try again if it went wrong. This meant I had a greater connection to each of those photos. I took my time, checked everything, took a breath and pressed the shutter. It was a relaxing experience, and nice in a way to not see my images instantly. I had to wait and see, which was quite exciting and also nerve-racking!
I got my film developed and scanned by a company called The Film Safe, which was also a unique experience. They're a small company and I had to post my film out to them! The whole experience didn't take long, and I ended up paying £14 for the film to be developed and scanned with high quality JPEGS, and loads of options are available which was handy. I was really pleased with the overall experience of this and will likely use them again!
Overall it was a really fun experience, and I hope to do more film photography soon! Film can get quite expensive now, but if it's not something I'm doing all the time, it's like a little treat to myself.