After my first failure with Lomography’s Fantôme Kino film, I was hesitant to try it again. Then, one day in early January 2021, after some success with the Babylon Kino, I shoved a roll into the FM3a, bolted the 35mm f/2 D on the front, and went to town…
Interestingly, and rare for North Texas, it snowed! And I had just seen several of those photographs where someone popped a flash into the rain or snow and got those bright dots against a dark sky… I figured the SB-28 at full power would provide both enough light and enough reach that I could stop down to f/5.8 or f/8 and maybe get something similar.
Well…
When I pulled the roll from the tank and hung it up, I was confused at the half-roll of near transparent negatives and felt immediately robbed and disgusted. Sure, there were clear images at the beginning and end, but what the hell was this strip of blank about?
Well, it took me a few minutes, but I remembered the flash-in-the-snow test, looked closer and found a few faint dark spots on the otherwise transparent strip of plastic and couldn’t wait to get them scanned.
Sadly, the Phantom, like its Babylon sibling, is curly. Like, C U R L Y, curly. Once dry, I rolled the film tightly, emulsion side out, and stuffed it into a film can for a couple of days. The film base is quite thick, and so even that didn’t really removed the curl, but it relaxed it long enough to get scanned.
Sadly, the flash-in-the-snow pictures didn’t work. Here are the best of a bad dozen or more frames.
Bah. 1) not enough snow falling to really get the effect; 2) not enough depth of field either, and 3) I’m not sure which spots are dust and which are actual snow…
Curses.
Fantôme: 2 / James: 0
