A Brick on a Trip!

I’ve had a bit of hiatus recently! Work has been busy, and I’ve been getting ready to do a trip. I’m now on the trip and as I sit writing this I’m in a converted barn in the heart of the Devon countryside! As always one of the first considerations on any trip is what photo gear to take with me. As this trip is to be of a slightly slower, calmer pace, I wanted to slow down a bit. I also wanted to continue to use up my film stash rather than go out and buy more. I’ll be doing mostly landscape this trip, so I decided to use up my Pan F Plus.

I’ve got a full “brick” of it, it’s time I not only used it, but also got to grips with it! It is often considered to be a “difficult” film to get right. For those of you who don’t know it, it’s the slowest film in the Ilford range, rated at 50 ISO. It has incredibly fine grain. It does however need a lot of light, 8X that needed for HP5! (each stop is twice the amount of light), so 3 stops, 50-100 (1) 100-200 (2) 200-400 (3), so 2x, 4x 8x! Not only that, it also likes accurate exposure. So I’ve carried with me not only my exposure meter but also my tripod! I’m expecting some slow shutter speeds in the coming days. Pan-F is also billed being a contrasty film, so that my help.

In order to use that film, it also means that I have carried along the Hasselblad 501CM, with the 80mm and 150mm lenses. 2 backs, tripod and a cable release. That should slow me down! Of course I’ll be sharing images and thoughts on my return.

In the meantime, I’m going to try another experiment. Starting Monday I intend to post one photo a day. This may lead to an Instagram project, maybe not! I’ll test drive the idea here first! They won’t stay about for long – catch them while you can!!