Wednesday 30 January 2013

Budapest (revisited)

This post is not about my visit at Budapest, but rather an indeed technical experience I did, before heading to the city in which I took the photographs I am about to show you.

This idea came up with a conversation with Sofia, where she wondered about the outcome of a 35mm film with perforations (like the many holga cameras do allow) this match sparkled a burst of ideas and little tweaks I could attempt to do and make an experience with it.

I got some rolls of T-Max 3200, got the 120 film holders, tape, 120 paper carrier and in a closed closet, where I stayed for about 20 minutes, trying to fit the 35mm onto the medium format protection paper.

And there not much else you could possibly need. All to be assertive is making sure the film is correctly put onto the new medium, roll it back nice, tight and leak-less of light, put it on the camera and be ready to shoot!

The next thing to have in consideration is where you are on the actual location and you get a good spot or moment to take a memory of. I was shooting with a Rolleiflex T, and because the camera I was using is different from the film I carried, what you see on the screen is not actually what is going to get embodied on the film (6x6) but more like a panoramic image ration, with the addition of labels, such as film type, shoot number and sprocket holes.

When the rolls were shot and I was back to London again, it was time for process and scan them. The process was the old fashioned three-step develop way that, according to the chart list, I saw the times required to make a good development. Scanning however was a rather different story. Because of the size of the film, the film holders for scanners do not exist, hence making us to find ways of doing the thing around. But it can be as simple as putting the 35mm on a 120mm film holder, and now you can see the wholesome of your pictures!















Sunday 20 January 2013

New Year's Present

Even though some of you already stumbled upon what I am about to show, it is still relevant to me to put them here, as proof of what remained hidden for so many years in the closet. What I am referring to is nothing but a roll of film. 

It all happened in a rather windy, cold day, a few days before my departure back to London (around the 5th of January). There I was, trying to see what I had and needed to pack and those that could stay for maybe another time when it crossed my mind to go and look for some ink cartridges to bring along with me. The closet was packed with memories and objects from mine, my brothers, even my parents early days. Curious, I took boxes and papers and objects that, despite put aside, still help refreshing some memories of early times. From those, I saw a cassette recorder and an unseen camera, which I immediately took out and carried to my room. Dust was decorating those gadgets and my mind was curious to see which wonders could they have inside. I opened the camera's box, gazed upon it and turn it around, wishing for a film inside it. A film!!

How many pictures could it hold inside? How old could they be? Who might be in them, where such a few wonders passing at the speed of light through my head. Carefully enough to avoid ruining the whole gathering of memoirs, I rolled the film back and took it from the camera, keeping them safe and sound, ready to gain life again, at my hands in a near future! :)

But this was the point where I was to remain, for now. London was still a few days away and I didn't want to spend money processing film in Porto, where I could do it, with my very hands and for free at Uni. This said, I put them in my bag and turned over to the cassete recorder. There was a tape inside, but no sound was coming out of it, apart from a metallic palhete trying to roll the tape over, unsuccessfully.

Anyhow, these were fine discoveries that I came to find out later to have even more meaning than what they seemed. The cassete holds (my dad's words) the first sound that I ever made. He bought the recorder to protect from the marvels of time the ever first sound I made. The tape, seems to be still fine, but that was something I forgot to bring and try to fix (maybe it is not time yet to listen to those sounds).

The negative, though, revealed a few surprises! For starters, it had only two photographs taken out of a roll of 36 frames. The two frames that still remained intact, though, had a lot to be told about! What, I cannot say for these recollections are even unusual to me. Anyhow, where's what I got from the hidden negative






And for now, we stay here.