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.
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