Sony Diaries: The Zen in seeing the mundane in new light

Zen is based on the belief, and the knowledge, that beauty and meaning can be found in the ordinary.

The Gallery at the PGCRL on a rare bright and sunny afternoon in February.

First roll with a newly-acquired 1975'ish Minolta XE-7

As far as I can remember, it's been almost 20 years since I loaded 35 film on to a camera; even longer since I used B&W film. The chemically plastic smell of popping open a film canister brings back fond memories.

Shooting with film is not something that may be taken lightly. Film and processing, including scanning, is expensive. A 36-exp roll will set you back $0.60/shot. I set out to shoot no more than 2 frames per subject, budgeting to shoot up to 20 shots on this walk around Kensington Market. This is so different from shooting digital, with over 500 clicks for a similar outing.

I had to carefully choose my subject matter for suitability for B&W. The absence of colour means "focusing" on other aspects such as subject matter, textures, shapes, patterns, and the sum of all these: composition. Limiting myself to using 2 manual, prime (non-zooming) lenses: 28F2.8 and 50F1.4 meant I had to "zoom" with my feet. The fact that I only have 20 shots to use in a busy environment with lots of moving parts (this is not landscape photography)  meant that I had to be disciplined in my movement and quick to decide what was shot-worthy.

And one more thin:  I had to make an educated guess for the exposure setting, since I couldn't rely on the camera metering. The Minolta XE-7 is a manual focus camera and when it wasn't possible to bring the camera to my eye (so as not to spook the subject matter), I relied on the distance scale on the lens for focus; not an easy task when aiming for shallow depth of field.

For film, I used Ilford XP2: a chromogenic black and white film that is developed in colour C-41 chemistry. It has a wide-exposure latitude (more forgiving for exposure errors), and doesn't require traditional B&W processing. C-41 colour processing is readily available locally. I also used either a yellow or a light orange filter to increase scene contrast.

I find XP2 to be lower in contrastthan traditional B&W. My next roll will be Ilford HP5 developed with traditional B&W soups.

All things considered, it was a satisfying walk-around.