Now that I live on The Drive and am a laid back East Vancouverite I have no excuse but to go to any festival that shuts down Commercial Drive. I've done the Car Free Festival three years in a row now and while they change it up a bit and have been spreading it out to other neighbourhoods in Vancouver I stick with the original location. After all, it's in my new hood.

Packing only 35mm

Unlike with other Car Free Days this time I brought only 35mm film cameras: my Pentax K1000 and my new Fujica ST705. I loaded both with different films and wandered the crowded streets shooting both black and white and colour. I wasn't the only one either. You couldn't not see DSLR owners laden down with heavy lenses but there were also a fair amount of people with film cameras; most of them young people who, like me (though no longer young in body), seem to want to work through the challenge of not having an instant preview screen in the back of their cameras.

Shooting slowed down

I had plenty of rolls in my bag but shooting in this way still made me slow down. In my mind I was cognizant that I had a limited commodity that I was using up with every shot. Not only that but because I was distrustful of the metering of my cameras (even with new batteries they still don't conform to my idea of exposure) I took time to make sure that what the meters were telling me was right. Now that I have my rolls back I can see that I was overexposing a tad in the sun. This is something that I would correct immediately with my 30D, of course. On the street, I started with the sunny 16 rule.

Fujica and its metering with M42 lenses

As I had written before, my new Fujica ST705 makes you take an extra three steps to activate the light meter. On its own 55mm Fujinon a half-press of the shutter button will activate the light meter but with my plentiful non-Fujinon M42 lenses you have to also hold down the DOF button and then half-press the shutter AND use stop-down metering.

In practice I didn't find this as onerous as I assumed and after a few shots with it I unconsciously press down on both buttons at the same time to get exposure. So, no biggie.

I did shoot a roll with the Fujica but because I preferred mostly to my widest prime (the 20mm on my Pentax) I didn't have any shots there I liked a lot. The one you see above is serviceable if underexposed because of my getting used to the metering on the Fujica. Still, I liked shooting with two bodies and would welcome doing another event with the same combination. I only need a better strap for the Fujica as it is so short it is more of a ligature than a convenience.

Shooting Kodak BW 400CN and chromogenic black and white

Like a lot of people getting into film at this time finding a developer can be an education. First with 120 medium format I found that the number of developers in Vancouver was small and so your needs come down to convenience married with reliability. With 35mm you can drop colour (C-41) rolls off to almost any place including chains such as Wal-Mart, Costco or London Drugs. However, black and white film is another matter together.

True black and white film requires a different set of chemicals to process and none of the chains above will do them. Worse, they may take your BW film and try to process them with color chemicals and ruin them. So for true BW film you have to go back to a pro shop again.

However, Kodak, Ilford and Fujifilm, in their infinite wisdom, have compromised by creating chromogenic black and white film. These are films that essentially print in C-41 but only in black and white. Although they are said to have less contrast than true black and white I say convenience wins out (at least until I'm allowed to develop at home). Other well known chromogenic black and white films include Ilford's XP2 Super and Fujifilm's Neopan 400CN.

Kodak BW 400CN is one I've had experience with before as it comes in 120 as well. It gives a rather milky look and when scanned in colour has a sepia tone to it (though I generally scan in greyscale). For a contrastier look I usually double the layer in Photoshop and overlay it and then work the opacity slider to taste.

Rest of the set

You can take a look at the rest of the set here.