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- Dec 10, 2013
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Last week I spotted my OM-10 had a film loaded in it with almost no shots taken. So I was bored and decided I'd have a throwback to my old hobby and combine it with my new one, I readied the camera on the tripod and set up the lasers, and reeled off the entire film in one evening.
I got the negatives back from the developing lab today along with the CD containing the scanned images. I was half expecting a dull grainy mess, but I was surprised that all but a few of the shots came out, some far better than I'd envisioned. Although in a technical sense film is far from optimal when photographing lasers, these reminded me both why I got into film and photography in the first place.
These were all manual focus and guesswork where the exposure time was concerned. Thankfully film does something called reciprocity failure, where the exposure curve unlike digital is nonlinear, giving diminishing returns over time. In a nutshell this means the longer the light exposes the film, the less effect it has, and if you extrapolate this to long exposures the result is it becomes very difficult to totally fudge up and blow the exposure, giving you a huge amount of latitude.
I'll start off by posting this, my SKY 532 & 445:
The 532 is rendered slightly oddly on film, sometimes appearing with a yellow tinge.
I noticed while taking the above photo that behind me a small pocket lighter was reflecting and splitting the laser into hundreds of smaller beams.
I took a picture of the green and blue:
But then I thought, why not do them both?
I had heavy incense in the air and the details were showing very well - so I combined the green and blue after a bit of repositioning:
I then pointed my red laser at the lighter and lined up a few of my pen lasers on the floor. Believe it or not the light blue beam is 405:
Film has a much higher susceptibility to UV than digital, which is why "back in the day" a UV filter (or several) was a common part of a photographer's kit. Without one, outdoor photographs sometimes take on a blue tinge, particularly on a sunny day, as the UV present taints the film. Here it's made the 405 look like a bright blue laser. The Rigel is in the centre.
I then set up in another position:
The film's sensitivity to red really shows in these, as it was nowhere near as striking as it is here.
No laser photoshoot of mine is complete without some crystal beams:
different angle:
Its quite hard to make the Rigel out against some of the other monster beams, so I did a shot with just three of the weaker pens:
Then some "all my wavelengths" type of shot:
I really like how 650 looks in these, it turns a sort of "tomato red" that reminds me of laser beams in films during the 80s and early 90s, when red lasers were in vogue and used to portray over-the-top security arrangements. I totally wasn't counting on 405 appearing bluer than 445 though, in future I could try a UV filter but I suspect that will just lower the brightness a bit.
The film used was Kodak Ektar 100, run and processed at box speed.
:drool:
I got the negatives back from the developing lab today along with the CD containing the scanned images. I was half expecting a dull grainy mess, but I was surprised that all but a few of the shots came out, some far better than I'd envisioned. Although in a technical sense film is far from optimal when photographing lasers, these reminded me both why I got into film and photography in the first place.
These were all manual focus and guesswork where the exposure time was concerned. Thankfully film does something called reciprocity failure, where the exposure curve unlike digital is nonlinear, giving diminishing returns over time. In a nutshell this means the longer the light exposes the film, the less effect it has, and if you extrapolate this to long exposures the result is it becomes very difficult to totally fudge up and blow the exposure, giving you a huge amount of latitude.
I'll start off by posting this, my SKY 532 & 445:
The 532 is rendered slightly oddly on film, sometimes appearing with a yellow tinge.
I noticed while taking the above photo that behind me a small pocket lighter was reflecting and splitting the laser into hundreds of smaller beams.
I took a picture of the green and blue:
But then I thought, why not do them both?
I had heavy incense in the air and the details were showing very well - so I combined the green and blue after a bit of repositioning:
I then pointed my red laser at the lighter and lined up a few of my pen lasers on the floor. Believe it or not the light blue beam is 405:
Film has a much higher susceptibility to UV than digital, which is why "back in the day" a UV filter (or several) was a common part of a photographer's kit. Without one, outdoor photographs sometimes take on a blue tinge, particularly on a sunny day, as the UV present taints the film. Here it's made the 405 look like a bright blue laser. The Rigel is in the centre.
I then set up in another position:
The film's sensitivity to red really shows in these, as it was nowhere near as striking as it is here.
No laser photoshoot of mine is complete without some crystal beams:
different angle:
Its quite hard to make the Rigel out against some of the other monster beams, so I did a shot with just three of the weaker pens:
Then some "all my wavelengths" type of shot:
I really like how 650 looks in these, it turns a sort of "tomato red" that reminds me of laser beams in films during the 80s and early 90s, when red lasers were in vogue and used to portray over-the-top security arrangements. I totally wasn't counting on 405 appearing bluer than 445 though, in future I could try a UV filter but I suspect that will just lower the brightness a bit.
The film used was Kodak Ektar 100, run and processed at box speed.
:drool:
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