Saturday 28 October 2006

The Double

In the early stages of developing my world-beating device that allows you to shoot 35mm film on any medium format camera, I played around with various methods of film carrier. The first was an extremely complex and fiddly device and not at all user friendly in any way. Imagine the fiddliness involved in loading a 4x5 film holder - then times it by a thousand. (Okay so loading a 4x5 film holder isn't fiddly at all once you've got the hang of it, but hopefully you get the idea.)

Anyway, this prototype device did in fact allow me to load two strips of 35mm film side by side. I only did it the once. Imagine the fiddliness involved in loading one strip of 35mm film in the device - then times it by a thousand. That film sat around in a plastic bag for a good couple of years, moving from house to house, fridge to bedroom to car to bedroom to fridge (in no particular order), before I decided it was time to shoot that muhth-er-fuhk-er (correct phonetic spelling).

As with any experimentation there were some unexpected results. In the way the films married together. In the apparent lack of flatness of the film. In the quality of the film after being so mistreated for so long.

Clearly some shots were better than others. Overall I did get the what I was hoping for (see last image especially), but buggered if I'm going to try it again in a hurry.

At least not the way I did it. I do have new ideas on how to do it better - though where there may be time savings on one step, time may well be added for another.





In other exciting news, thanks to my mate Tim here's a link to Mark Amery's DomPost column from Friday 20 October about ME (oh and some other, less exciting people too). This is the version Mark submitted before the DomPost butchers I mean sub-editors got their hands on it.

And in other exciting news, my mate Simon has started a blog too - the mightily titled Swim Star Challenge 2007 (this guy should go into reality TV). It's not a photo-blog (if the title's not a give away) but it's worth a laugh - especially to those in the know (you'll know who you are when you see it).

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