I shot more film in July than I have in any other month of 2012. I shot 5 rolls and finished off one that sat in the camera from an earlier month. Why did I shoot more? Well…I am just enjoying it so much. In fact, right now it is pretty much all I want to shoot. For me and this project, I think July marked the turning point for me. I found that I am getting more good shots from each roll of film. I’m getting my camera and it’s setting pretty dialed and I have a pretty good baseline of the film and how it is should respond. Essentially, I am seeing the images in my head before I shoot them.

So…All is good right?  Wrong. I learned some things this month.

1) Never temperature abuse your film. I got lazy and I left a roll of film in my Olympus 35 RC for a few months. I left it in my garage and/or in my car as temps neared 100. While I still got a few images I liked from it, it was obvious the film didn’t perform as planned. It’s flat and grainy. Stupid me.

2) Traveling – I made two mistakes. Not thinking through how many images I planned on taking before I left on my trip. This resulted in me early rewinding and wasting some film. Then, on my return trip, I FORGOT to rewind it and sent my camera through the security checkpoint X-Ray machine. D’oh!

3) Cost – OK…It is time for me to start processing my own film. Taking 5 rolls in for processing and printing is costly. I won’t do that again. I’ve got to learn to do my own processing and I can scan negatives at home. Significantly cheaper solution and given how much I like shooting film, I better learn soon.

4) While shooting one roll while riding, I mistakingly turned the compensation knob on my camera while pulling it out of the pocket of my pack. I ended up shooting the entire roll underexposed. I had to push it quite a bit to get images. I still like them for the feel of the images, but they are obviously not right, especially when I compare them to another roll of the same film. Again, stupid me.

All that said, I also got some of my favorite shots so far. I am really getting the hang of shooting film while in motion. I am also experimenting with some panning action shots as well. The last thing is that I tried a new film this month too, Ilford HP5 400. I’ll share more about that in a later post.

Overall, still loving this 2012 film project. So much that I want to sell some stuff and get a second lens for my Bessa R4A. I want a good 35mm to use the camera for other things. I plan to do a more detailed review in the coming weeks on my first 6 months with the Bessa R4A.

Anyway, here are just a few pics from the various rolls to give you an idea of what is to come in future posts. I’ll be digging a bit into each of these series and films.

This isn’t the end of my film posts from my experiences with film in July. I’ll be doing a few posts with quite a few images starting next week as I am headed out on another adventure. I’ve got posts planned for the rest of this week, but I will be taking Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off the blog. Back next Thursday with more film focused words and images.