It’s #BIFscale17! Woo!
In order to really get the party rocking, I decided to redscale a roll of Dustin Adams‘ ‘Psychedelic Blues’ film to see if I could bring some color to the redscales.
This was my first attempt at rescaling a roll, and, wouldn’t you know it, when I got to the end of the roll, the tape came loose. I put the camera into the dark bag with no problem, but no matter how hard I struggled, I couldn’t get the film rewound into the canister, and I ended up carrying the bag into the bathroom and opening it up in the dark to insert the developing tank and reels.
But not before trying to force everything in through the arm holes and exposing the film to some additional, unneeded, unplanned, but sort of interesting fogging…
The sprocket hole marks are really interesting and show some possibilities, if controlled and planned and with some sort of intent behind it.
But this arose from my relative inexperience and ineptitude, and not anything planned. I suppose my error made the color and experiment even trippier, and I guess it’s groovy enough, but I would’ve preferred to get the pictures out straight. (As straight as Psychedelic Blues film, redscaled, could be, anyway.) I did some free-lensing that I was looking forward to, and had some things I was hoping to add to a project—I forgot I was shooting redscale—but alas. Most of the film was extra-fogged.
I shot the most of the roll at 12 ISO, with occasional forays up to 50 to get slightly faster shutter speeds. I planned to set it to 12 and then use exposure compensation to try to shoot at 3 or 6, but I found that the exposure compensation dial is tied into the ISO dial in such a way as to prohibit shooting above or below the 12-3200 range. When you set it at 12, you can set the exposure composition to -1 or -2 (25 or 50), but it won’t turn to +1 or +2 (6 or 3). This is a little bit unfortunate. It might have something to do with how I put the FG back together after I repaired it, but I don’t think so. I expect it’s a limitation of entry level FG.
Oh well. For now, I guess I’m limited to the FE for super-low ISO work: it’ll go down to ISO 3 with Exposure Compensation, rather than just 12 on the FG.
Or, you know, I could learn the zone system and stop relying on meters and auto exposure…
Anyway.
I think the Psychedelic Blues has some possibilities in the Rescale world, but at $10/roll, and with just 3 rolls left, I think I’ll hold onto it and go back to the Red Dragon.* In fact, there’s a roll of that in the OneTouch 100 right now!
In situations where it turned out ok, I like the yellowscale of the very low ISOs. I visited the graveyard where my great- and grandparents are buried and shot around a bit, and a couple of shots worked pretty well.
The sky goes a bit yucky teal, and 25 might yield better results. I hope to get some focused shooting time soon, but my limited free time is currently filled up with a redesign of this website, so I don’t know.
I shot a roll of Psychedelic Blues straight a month or more ago, and I’ll try to share some results soon. I wasn’t thrilled with it, if I recall, and I shot it during the ill-fated weekly roll thing, so I never got around to working with the scans or writing up a post.
The backlog grows.
#BIFscale17 is going strong for another 18 days, and we’d would love you to join in on Twitter or Instagram. And if you miss it, look forward to #BIFscale18 in a short 355 days or so.
*Speaking of Ultrafine’s Red Dragon film, I de-redscaled a roll of that and shot it… half the roll was fogged from sloppy hand-rolling, but the part that came through fine has some great color and fun grain. Look forward to some shots from that roll in a few days.
