My Life on 35mm #11: The Super Weird Roll | Velvia 100 January 2019

It is officially almost June and I am only just now posting photos from the beginning of the year! This will be the last of these posts for a little bit though, because since these rolls I haven’t been shooting film so much. I’m missing it, and wanting to get back into it properly again, but this is the last roll I have.

I decided to start 2019 by testing out Velvia for the very first time. Sam has been telling me it’s his favourite for a long time, literally years, but rolls of Velvia are suuuuuuuper expensive, and developing them is even worse. The rolls cost around the $50 NZD mark each from the major camera retailers, and developing can cost up to another $50. I now develop everything with The Black and White Box and it is a far less painful pill to swallow as they only charge $22 for E-6 processing, a little more than regular processing. Plus they sell Velvia at a far lower price because they have fewer retail overheads to cover. It’s still more expensive overall compared to other films, but as a once in a while film, it’s finally possible instead of being $100 all up per roll.

Now, having said all that, I don’t think my camera handles film well anymore anyway. A common complaint I have is how oddly coloured, and how sporadicly coloured, every roll of film I shoot is. I see how Portra is meant to look on the internet and mine just looks not as nice. The same thing happened with this roll of Velvia, and along with struggling heaaaaps with my exposures for this roll, worse than I have been (broken light meter, as usual) the shots didn’t turn out great. And I was disappointed. It was an expensive roll. I need Sam to shoot his and get it developed so I can compare what it is meant to look like…

Update:

I just had a fat chat with Sam about it after writing the above paragraphs, and we theorise that there may be some small light leak in my camera somewhere. It’s pretty elderly to be fair, so it doesn’t surprise me. I will ask him really nicely if I can borrow one of his to try shooting and see what kind of results I get. Maybe ill try make a YouTube video out of it for our new channel… stay tuned :p

But anyway, enjoy what I got. I’ll show you some before and afters. Some of these have been minorly tweaked to make them more viewable.

January 1st 2019, Zar and Mitch start researching the process of buying land during the year.

This is the only one that came out even close to how I think they are meant to. This was one of the first shots of the roll, right after I put it in the camera.

The view from the Bach on New Years Day.

The beginning of the weird colour casts that only get worse, then better, then worse as we go through the roll. At this point, they are made worse where I under expose the shot because of the light meter.

The nerd crew go Pokemon hunting. I get horribly sunburnt because New Zealand.

And then because the weather was fucking perfection, we headed to the beach post Pokemon hunt.

This whole day had a really similar level of red cast, only getting worse where I stuffed up the exposure.

Hiding from the NZ sun whilst trying to enjoy the sun.

Oh the joys of no ozone layer.

And then the shots get kind of okay? This was a week or so later.

And then really bad. A bit later again.

Raw scan

Tweaked a little bit

Black and white kind of solves a lot haha

Raw scan

Edited slightly- I actually still kind of love this one

And then a bit better again? And then immediately worse? I really don’t understand what went on here. I presume exposure stuff up.

For safety reasons, I have left out a big selection of shots that were taken around Sam’s neighbourhood really near his house that we’re the same day as the Iris, but they all fall into the a bit fucked, with some being more fucked category. Basically mirroring everything else here.

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I honestly don’t know how to explain any of this exactly, other than maybe a light leak like Sam and I theorise. Why it would be better and then worse baffles me a smidge but I think the conclusion is probably that the camera is a bit dodge somewhere.

I think I really should try another camera and see what my shots come out like. I adore my little hand me down OM-1 but maybe its a ‘shoot the whole roll at once’ camera. That is why I think the last roll, the roll of Portra on the beach, was so consistent in terms of colour. It was literally all shot within about an hour of the roll going in and that never happens for me.

But this is it for now! I have a roll on the camera that has been in there for a while… and based on the theory we are now working with, it will be a bit effed. So I will be back shortly to report on how that one goes. Fingers crossed for not totally ruined.

C x