A long long time ago in a country far away I got a splitcam as a gift. This light yellow black camera is designed to take double exposures with a nifty slot covering part of the lens. I shot one roll in it, the film got stuck so I never shot with it again. Until last summer in Aruba, I gave this old camera another spin and here are the results. It did get stuck again so I was never able to finish the roll but I did get the film developed.
Tag "exposure"
This was my second roll of double exposures. You can find my first roll here. It was a random experiment, I didn’t know which frames contained what text. I had better results when I did prepare and wrote which frames I had shot what on, you can see those photos here.
This was a roll of Fuji Superia 200 in my Canon SLR 500 shot around Singapore and the original images found online and shot in the dark on my laptop.
Some time ago I came across this thread in a forum and I recognized the style of photos. I always liked them but I assumed that most of them used $300 ND filters which I didn’t have intention to buy. But seeing good results from a cheap piece of welding glass got me interested. I got a smaller piece of glass first, but it was very prone to light leaks.
I then purchased a much larger one ( able to fit over my 10-22 wide angle) for $6 at the local hardware store and use a reverse fitted lens hood to attach it to my lens with rubber bands. I still get occasional light leaks, especially shooting in bright sunlight so at one point I will buy a cheap filter and glue it to one.
When shooting I use a tripod and a remote shutter release. Two issues to look out for when shooting with a piece of welding glass attached to your lens:
1) Manual Focus. Focus before you attach the piece of glass because it is so dark that once attached you will have a hard time focusing. After focusing I set it to manual focus so it stays in position
2) Manual White Balance. I only recently figured that one out. My welding glass gives me a very greenish tint ( the reason a real ND filter costs a couple of hundred dollars more). But if I set the white balance manually it removes most of the greenish cast and then shooting RAW gives me post processing control to to really take care of the issue.
As you see though in the end my images end up as black and white images because somehow the photos work better in that way for me.
These were the first two photos I took with the welding glass. They were exposed at about 30 seconds at F11. I got up to 2 minutes with F22 but having a camera on a slippery rock with a piece of welding glass attached with rubber bands makes me want to shoot a bit faster. Most images are shot at 45 secs in RAW at f11.
This was the second time I went out with the welding glass. I hadn’t figured out the manual white balance yet so the greenish tint was removed in Photoshop. In the first image you can see the light leak that forms the big circle. I have taped up the edges of the glass but I don’t know if it has really helped. These days I put my lens cleaning cloth on top of the lens and glass when shooting hoping to minimize the light coming through.
My third time experimenting. When shooting with such a high f stop I need to remember to clean my sensor and lens as you can see some of the dirt on my lenses.
And finally my latest experiments. Stationary objects with flowing water around them really makes this technique shine.
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I shot a roll of lomo 100 X-pro in my holga to review that type of film and this new wide lens adapter. I ran out of my usual electrical tape that I use to keep my holga lightleak tight and in one piece. I picked up a new roll of regular black tape and obviously it did a very bad job, in fact it did such a horrible job I wonder if it sneaked in its photon buddies and let them go to town on my film resulting in horrendous orange light leaks all over my pictures.
I could make up a story that this was my artistic intention in order to portray the fragility of perfection and the honesty of failure but that would be a big bowl of shit. So lets get to the review.
The top part is the regular Holga Lens and the bottom image is with the converter. I picked up this converter for $13 on Ebay because I was interested in buying the latest lomo camera: the sprocket rocket.
The main advantage the sprocket rocket has over shooting 35mm in a Holga is its wide angle lens and the ease of forwarding the film without having to deal with counting clicks. I was wondering if this converter would be wide enough to dissuade me from buying the sprocket rocket and stay loyal to my 5 year old Holga. After looking at the results I can honestly say “I don’t know”
It does create a wider image, that is the positive. The bad side is that the normally blurry edges of my Holga images are now even more distorted and vague.
But it is hard to judge this lens just one roll of film which was badly abused by lightleaks. I will have to give this lens another chance before I pass my judgment upon it and then decide if I want to add the sprocket rocket to my collection of cameras.
I saw Ndroo’s (great Singaporean photography blogger) awesome double exposure photo’s some time back and I wanted to do something similar. I followed his instructions which are found here. But when I was putting up negatives to my laptop screen I was wondering if it wouldn’t be easier to just shoot images on my laptop screen.
Target
I would be able to find more unique picture and have more control. I set up my tripod and went to work. I scoured the internet and found suitable images. I didn’t want images with a lot of detail of small pieces. Very clear two color images with a strong edge. I followed the instructions and shot 1 stop under, but looking at my pictures now I will shoot my next roll at the correct exposure just to make sure the white are non-transparent.
I did have trouble pulling the film back out of the roll. I tried various methods including licking another piece of negative and sliding that in which didn’t work but I did get to taste film chemicals for the first time. I tried cutting small hooks in another film roll which also didn’t work.My last and worst idea was tying a piece of string to the end of film so I could pull it out later, I don’t have to tell you that failed miserably. In the end I had the people at my filmlab pull out the film leader and luckily they didn’t ask why there was a piece of string tied to my film.
I used my Canon EOS 500 SLR and Kodak Tungsten Film. I chose to use my Canon film SLR, because it always positions the film in the same way so they images will always overlap perfectly. The Kodak Tungsten was expired and cross-processed which explains the blueish color shift.
I think this is a really fun and creative project. I hope this inspires you to go out and shoot some, like it inspired me.
Tomorrow it is Lunar New Year with the Year of the Rabbit. Tonight there were the preparations for the New Year’s Eve show. I like how thoroughly Singapore prepares their event with a full run through of the show and even a partial firework show. The advantage of attending the preparations is the lack of a crowd and the earlier timing. I don’t think I will go down there tomorrow.
Fireworks with the financial district in the background. This was about a 4 second exposure. Not long enough to get smooth water, but otherwise the brightness of the fireworks would blow out all my highlights.
The panorama (please click for full size) consists of four separate images and put together in Photoshop. The floating platform on the left-hand side is the largest floating platform in the world. It is larger than a soccer field. The impressive building on the left is the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore’s latest acquisition to it’s skyline.
Gong Xi Fa Cai !
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