21 February 2019

A roll of film with the Hasselblad 500cm

I purchased my Hasselblad 500cm last summer and have put several rolls of film through the camera. I really want to learn the limits of what I can do with this camera and the only way to do that is use the camera more. In the past, I mainly have shot landscapes and architecture and have always struggled with taking photos of people. I recently realized that capturing photos of friends and family are going to be the photos that I cherish the most. Practice makes perfect, so I have been trying to take my Hasselblad with me more to learn what I can do with this camera and to get better at portraits and everyday life photography (what is the slowest I can take handheld shots, how to focus faster to capture fleeting moments, etc.).

Since this is a learning process, I wanted to share an entire roll of film, not just the “good” photos. For this roll of film, I was shooting at three different locations on three different days. I ended up shooting 4 frames at each location (not planned) and generally wish I had more light in all of these. I was shooting Kodak Tri-X 400 pushed to 1600 and developed the film at home in Rodinal 1:50. I think I would have liked to have 1 more stop of light in almost all of the photos in order to get denser negatives. I like the harsh contrast in some of these, but would have preferred to have that as a creative part of processing and less a result of no data on the negative. I scanned all of these images at home with my Nikon D750, an old enlarger-turned-copystand, Kaiser backlight, and the Nikon 55mm 3.5 Micro.

Let me know what you think!