If you cast your eyes back to July last year, I wrote a post about the old Yashica 44 medium format camera that I picked up off eBay. I didn’t mean to buy a camera that only took 127 film; it was a novice’s mistake borne out of ignorance and possibly inattention to detail.
It turns out that very few places sell 127 format film these days. Analogue Wonderland do, as do Nik & Trick - and I have managed to acquire a few expired rolls of Ilford from eBay. It’s expensive too, at between £12 and £15 a roll of 12 exposures, and then the processing (more on that later). The negatives are 4cm by 4cm.
The biggest hurdle I have faced with the camera though is me. Inexplicably I developed a bit of a mental block around the camera. After exposing the film in July something was stopping me from removing the film from the camera. It wasn’t logical. Maybe I feared my ability to do so without creating terrible light leaks over the film. Maybe I just thought the results would be terrible. Certainly the search for a place to actually process the film was daunting in itself. But eventually last weekend, after six months of thinking about it, I got the film out of the camera and set about trying to find somewhere to process it.
After a very long hunt around, I found Forest Photographic in Walhamstow. They process at very reasonable prices (compared to everywhere else I found) 127 film, and the turnaround time was good in a couple of days.
So, the results. I think it’s fair to say that my dreams of becoming the next Vivian Maier have been cruelly dashed. BUT, there is something about these pictures that I really like.
I love the quality and timbre of the film itself (Rerapan 400) - its graininess is gorgeous. Medium format is also a lovely compositional frame.
I shot the film almost blind in the sense that the camera settings were quite alien to me. From the shots below the shutter speed must not have been quite on-point (or the camera is just old and not firing on all cylinders). But actually I really like this effect; digital photography has made sharpness a new art form and playing with lack of focus is pleasing.
Another aspect that I am excited to play with is double exposure. The double exposure of me in the mirror was an accident, of not cranking the film on enough - but this gives me so many creative possibilities that it’s quite inspiring.
There’s definitely work to be done on my side in using the camera better (framing, overall composition, understanding of how the bloody thing works), but gaining the momentum to get the film developed has inspired me to keep pushing and to explore new photographic boundaries.
