Coffee Series #1: Personal Photography Project : Fidan

I have been a digital photographer.  Until now.  I will still shoot digital but film has found a place in my heart and my camera bag.  I purchased the Pentax 645n camera along with the 105mm f2.4 and 55mm f4 lenses, just a few weeks ago.  It is a medium format film camera and I shoot 120 film with it, meaning I have 16 frames per roll.  This is a huge adjustment to make from shooting digital.  It slows me down and makes photo making more of an art and each frame is important – especially since it is costing me close to $2 per click (cost of film, shipping, developing, scanning).  I like that I won’t be shooting away like mad and thus have far less to cull later.  I also love the way film looks and will be printing more this year.  There is a lot to learn however.  Focus at f2.4 with manual focus can be hit or miss, especially if the subject is very close to you.  Also, light is even more important as poor light and underexposure is a big no-no.  I also need to learn to meter properly to nail the exposures every single time and to know how much to overexpose the different film stocks.  Especially if I want to achieve the ‘look’ that I am dreaming of.

This coffee series project is something that I will be doing this winter in Toronto.  I will likely shoot 6-8 different people in their homes with only natural light streaming through.  Fidan Ismayilova was the first person I photographed for this project.  I used only the Pentax 67 lens – the legendary 105mm f2.4 and Kodak Portra 800 film.  A few of the shots didn’t have nearly the light I had hoped for and I was shooting at 1/30th of a second.  I will be shooting just 1 roll of film each session and that is a challenge in itself.  This was scanned by Indie Film Lab.