Today I took a short walk around Liverpool Cathedral shooting my favourite camera, my Medium Format Bronica SQ-Ai. Loaded in the film back were rolls of Ilford HP5+ shot at exposure index 1600 (think ISO 1600).
I'm really pleased with this set. The film back popped open when I was in St James' Cemetery wasting half a roll, but I got a cool "first of the roll" effect from it. I don't mind really as the weather was grey and miserable so I'd have ended up going back to shoot it again in any case.
Inside the Cathedral the light was fantastic, as ever! It's always really challenging to shoot in such low light, and so handheld at 1/15s shutter was pretty interesting. Only a couple of shots came out blurry from camera shake (not included here), and conversely, a couple were actually so overexposed and un-recoverable. Ah well, it's just another excuse to go back in a couple of weeks.
Add in that I pushed the film from ISO 400 to 1600 and home dev'd it, the negatives dried extremely well with zero scratches and absolutely minimal dust - so little in fact that I've not even bothered to clone it out in Lightroom! I'm properly chuffed with this lot. The 6x6cm negs handle pushing SO well, and I feel like I'm making progress and pushing myself out of the mediocre film rut I've felt in for a while now!
Cheers for now!
Olly!
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