ljplicease | When I have to pick films

I picked the film that I am going to shoot in Europe for our little trip there in March. I have to do this ahead of time because I am posting it there so that it can avoid the airport x-ray machines. My understanding is they do not usually x-ray the post. On Sunday my wife and I went to The Best Buy to look for camera bags for the same trip, and probably subsequent ones. I've settled on a dual camera configuration and wanted a backpack that carries two bodies with large lenses and that I can sling around and access without taking it off. Lena has a similar bag, but my equipment is bigger and heavier so I need a bigger bag. Anyway, the reason I “need” two (identical) camera bodies is so that each can have its own type of film and so that I can use different lenses without changing them. Once again I am not taking a digital again, except for my phone.


(a digital, but you get the idea)	Expired film at ESP in Philly	Redscale + Fisheye of tree	Cross C41 in E6

Choosing film for me is always a very personal experience for me. For somber things like a graveyard or prison black and white is great. Last year when we went to Eastern State Penitentiary for my birthday (it is a museum now), my favorite roll was some high speed color expired film. Cross processing film (using negative film and processing it in slide chemistry or vice versa) is another technique that I like for somber stuff. I do shoot a lot of vanilla color too though. This is the cheapest thing (aside from shooting black and white and processing myself). Slide film looks fantastic, but the film is more expensive to buy and process than negative. Redscale is an interesting thing, too, but I haven't really come up with a good application for it. It is regular negative film that you wind into the cartridge the wrong way so that you are not exposing the emulsion side of the film. You have to over expose a lot and you get a very strong red cast, hence the name for the technique.

Black and White film IR

I am sad to learn that Fujifilm's new digital infrared camera is available only to law enforcement and industry. I should have guessed that this might happen since this is what happened with their previous digital IR cameras from the 2000s. It seems a silly policy. You can just as easily buy the same camera in non IR configuration and pay a third party to have the IR filter removed. It is probably just as well anyway, because the camera is pretty expensive and it isn't film anyway. Right now I am trying to recoup my savings account after some big expenses.