I haven’t shot any film in almost a month, which has been quite a change from the last few months where I was shooting sometimes a couple rolls per week. I’ve been finding digital easier to just churn out work, shooting as much as I can and having the instant feedback without the added processing time as I fumble around trying to push myself and my work in different directions.
But on this outing I decided to grab a film camera, specifically my grandpa’s old Minolta XD5 paired with the beautiful Minolta 50/1.4 and a roll of Kentmere 400.
Minor White, composition, and shooting an SLR
I’ve used a lot of cameras over the years, but by far I’ve made the most pictures with my Leica M4-2, and my most frequently used digital camera right now is my Leica M262. Both those cameras are rangefinders, which are quite a different shooting experience from a traditional SLR.
For the uninitiated, a rangefinder does not show you exactly what the lens sees. Instead, you look through a viewing window with frame lines superimposed over the scene and you compose images by placing the frame lines around what you want to photograph. In contrast, an SLR is what most people are familiar with when it comes to shooting a camera. You look through a viewfinder and the viewfinder presents you with the image coming through the lens, bounced up in to the viewfinder by a mirror. What you see is what you get (viewfinder coverage aside).
There is a lot that could be written about shooting an SLR vs a rangefinder but what interested me about shooting an SLR on this outing was the way that the SLR shooting experience pulls you in to the frame you’re constructing. The abstraction of the viewing experience encourages a more considered approach to assembling a photograph. I had been spending the last couple days poring over the Minor White archives and admiring White’s absolutely exquisitely composed imagery. Such care and consideration to composition is at the very least less easy to do with a rangefinder. So, with Minor White in the background of my mind the SLR was my chosen camera.
For those interested, the Kentmere was developed in Ilfotec HC, 1+31.
Enjoy some more images below
