#307 ASSIGNMENT: JIM SOLLOWS #2
A photographer for 45 years, mentoring and training new photographers to work with film and established ones to be reacquainted with the medium, Jim Sollows sets this week's Assignment. We'll be thinking like we're shooting with film, though listen for the full story. Digital camera shooters can take part really easily and below, in the SECRET PEEK, a not so secret set of thoughts just incase you don’t have easy access to a printer.
Send your pictures to studio@photographydaily.show - 2000 pixels wide, any orientation you prefer; square, portrait, or landscape.
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The challenge in this edition is to ‘shoot a roll of film’ - and if you photograph digitally, that means limiting the number of pictures you make to 36. Jim asks you to choose one image, print it and take a picture of that photograph or better still hold that print and ask someone to make a portrait of you doing so. If you don’t have access to a printer, send in a selection (suggested 6) of the pictures that lead to your decision for a favourite, like a mini contact sheet to studio@photographydaily.show
Jim Sollows’ example for the assignment he has set.
BY JASON FOLEY (above and below)
This assignment was both challenging and fun. I have been shooting film for over a year now, so slowing things down and thinking through every frame is something that I am used to. To "simulate" a film experience on my digital camera, I went a bit overboard. I paired my mirrorless Canon EOS R with an adapted vintage Carl Zeiss Jena 58mm F2 from 1953. I disabled exposure preview and turned off all the modern tools that I could on the Canon. I set it to a monochrome profile, ISO 400, and even added a yellow filter to the lens as it created more contrast straight out of the camera. For metering, I used several, from a Sekonic L-28, a Pentax Digital Spot Meter, and a Reveni Labs Light Meter. All of the tools that I use for my film photography. Things started out well, but it was a challenge staying with just 36 exposures. Knowing that my memory cards were ready and waiting for thousands of raw files was tempting. In a few situations, I caved and fell back to old ways. This resulted in me starting and stopping the assignment a few times! In the end, I was able to capture the spirit of the assignment and I was pleased with my photos. Editing was kept to a minimum, with some cropping, dodging, and burning. I have included a few of my favorites from "the roll", a screen capture of all 36, a photo of the gear, and yours truly holding up the photo that I chose to have printed. I truly enjoyed this assignment.
BY PETER GAISER
Here's my submission. It's the first one I've done. I'll have to go back and try a few more.
I decided to go all-in on this assignment. Instead of shooting like film, I shot film. I've been wanting to get back to shooting some film for a while now (it's been a couple of years) and this assignment provided great motivation. Loaded a roll of HP5 into my Canon AE-1 (my dad's from the 1980s) and took some photo walks. I shot full manual and really slowed my shooting process, as well as shooting much more selectively. This also gave me an opportunity to try developing with Caffenol, which I am really pleased with. I digitized the negatives with my X-T4 and a macro lens, inverted them in Lightroom with only minor contrast adjustments, and printed a few shots on my Canon Pro-100. The AE-1 has been reloaded and is ready to go. Thanks Jim for giving me the push I needed to revisit film shooting and processing.
BY GERALD MURPHY (above and below)
For me this has been the hardest challenge yet. I don't expect to be able to do any kind of photowalk during the next 5 to 7 days other than my daily dogwalk. I set myself a target of just six shots - and stuck to it. I felt pressured immediately because I wouldn't be returning the way I came so (a) I had to be choosy about what I shot to save a couple of shots for anything I saw later on, and (b) If I didn't see anything, later on, I wouldn't have completed my six shots.
I was using my Fuji X-T4 handheld with a 35 mm f/2 lens and Acros + yellow film simulation but shooting in RAF (Fuji's RAW) plus jpeg, so the images (Image 1) in a screengrab from File Explorer are in B&W but they show the six shots, in the sequence shot and include the original filenames as proof. The second image is a Printscreen grab of the Lightroom Classic showing my chosen photo with filename while the filmstrip at the bottom shows all six images. Image 3 is of the chosen image, as exported from Lightroom and viewed in Photos. Image 4 is a shot I took with my Pentax K-1 camera of the printed image plus my X-T4 and 35 mm lens as used for the photos.
I hope that the series provides the same evidence as a contact sheet and that the set complies with the assignment.
BY JOHN MILLAR (above and below)
I went the digital route, but applied film shooting parameters, (my printer isn't too happy, so making a physical print wasn't possible). I decided to do a digital contact sheet of 24 frames I captured of Bruno, our almost 9-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier. I chose 24 frames as I went about it like I was shooting a 24-exposure roll.
Bruno is difficult to get a portrait shot of, quite camera shy in fact, he sees the camera and legs it usually! The solution is to get him focused (no pun intended) on something that makes him forget about a camera, in this instance his favourite Kong toy. This then gives around 30 to 60 seconds of shooting time, enough for a couple of dozen shots before he realises what's happening.
I've attached a copy of the chosen image from the 24, and the contact sheet, which I marked out (digitally) as if I'd been doing a physical contact sheet. Now, I really must get around to sorting the printer out!
BY SAMANTHA SCHMALFUSS
This one was more challenging than I expected. Realizing you can't look, delete and redo, it's too easy to be dependent and take for granted the digital age. My series was done at home due to illness and I thought, let's set the ISO to 800 and shoot completely in B&W. Not all the shots were perfectly in focus and a couple were not quite straight but there were some fun shots in there. This is a good challenge to do again.
Here are my submissions (above and below) for Jim Sollows assignment which I really enjoyed doing. The first image was taken on the 06 of June and the last one was taken on the 13 of June. They were shot on my Lumix TZ-95 in manual mode, at an ISO of 100 and in black and white JPEG. You may also notice that there is a running theme through the set of images, of water. I, with a couple of friends, am doing a monthly challenge with water as the theme, so I combined both together.
BY KELLY MITCHELL
Ok, I like this one! I like the idea of slowing it down, we need that, badly! I know it always takes me about 15-20mins, when I first head out shooting to stop being ‘click-happy’ so this assignment was great to slow down, to look, and to think about what I was going to shoot. Now I will admit that there were a few double frames where it was something moving but I did stop myself! Haha :)
So I decided just to take a couple of walks around the block just to see what I could find. And I think I was successful :) I hope.
I shoot with either a Canon 7D mark ii or 5D mark iv. I love them both; they have been all over the place and they’ve shot all sorts of stuff. Now, I had an idea, when you shoot with film, you usually put part of the label from the film package onto the back of the film camera so you have a reminder of what you are shooting. So I did the same thing (more or less) on top of the camera. I did try to find one of my old 1Gb cards but couldn’t find them so used a 4Gb card that limited the number of images that could be taken. All good things in theory, right?
For this challenge I used my 7D with 70-200mm at iso 400 and 36 exposures.
An example of ‘the roll’ below, in order.
