When I’m not working, I try to get out and keep myself busy, which will probably involve film cameras. A place I always like to head to is near the coast. We are very lucky to be so close to Devon, Cornwall & Dorset, giving us many amazing coastlines to choose from. On this evening, I chose Portland in Dorset. This location I have visited many times taking photos, the environment has so much to offer. You have landmarks such as Pulpit Rock and the lighthouse and if you wander away from this you have rugged coastline with beach huts offering lots of different colours and textures.

Before I arrived in Portland, I spent an hour at Lulworth Cove, where the sun was shining down golden. I was very surprised to see how the sky had changed so much between the two locations. This day, I had a Nikon F3 and Mamiya 645 medium-format camera in my camera bag. With the F3, I was shooting Portra 160, and with the Mamiya, I had my first-ever roll of Kodak Ektar, both with a low box speed shot at ISO 100. I knew this was now going to be a test under these low light conditions as my shutter speeds would be slow.

I had about 1 hour before I knew it would be too dark, I was already down to 1/60s - 1/125s with an aperture of 2.8 and handheld, I didn’t want to shoot any slower than this because of camera shake. Oh, of course, I left my tripod in the car, why!? Think of the long exposures I could have captured. I can almost imagine those succulent Instagram posts at 1/8s of the water swirling. The one point you learn fast with film is, you cannot raise your ISO. You learn to work with what you have, and I know I have learnt so much from shooting film, in ways, more than 8 years of shooting digital. Shooting film sloooows you down, you think about exposure and composition far more. Film isnt cheap so you make each shot count.

I did run into a few issues developing the rolls at home. The Kodak Ektar would not grip the spool inside the dark bag, and the leader would not come out of the Portra 160 with a lead picker, i’ve learnt this is because the film is thinner. This caused me to have to break the top of the film canister off. But, in the end, it all worked out. Film becomes a bit of an addiction, and self developing and scanning is one of the best process feelings ever. Lr presets and raw files on a day out are over, the colours that come with film straight out of camera are un matched with digital photography.