(Some) Films also have impressive dynamic range.

Having a choice of cameras/formats has its positives and negatives (No pun intended). I returned to my Zentit 11 35mm recently and was puzzled by what the ISO (film sensitivity to light) was set at. When checking the light meter reading I noticed that the ISO was set at 125. I wracked my brain trying to think of what film I had in the camera. Was it a random Ilford black and white film? Anyway, I plodded on with the camera set to ISO 125.

A couple of weeks later, back out with the Zenit 11, and with 6 shots left of the ISO 125 film I noticed the ISO was now set at 50 ISO. I remembered the fact that this was set at ISO 125 when I last used the camera so this setting must have changed when the camera was in my backpack... Not great, as this could also have happened before, moving to ISO 125 which I was sure was not a film speed in my stock of film.

The Zenit doesn't have a little holder to put a label from the film box which identifies the speed of the film whereas other cameras do. The Mamiya medium format camera has a slot for this info and the ISO selector is not the easiest dial to move, which is a good thing. Anyway, I got to the end of the roll and was really quite curious and anxious to find out the film speed. I wound in the film and opened up the back.... The film I had been shooting with and thought was an ISO 125 black and white was actually Kodak Portra 400.... Oops!

What does this mean? Well, if I'm shooting a film that is ISO 400 at 125 I'm adjusting the setting to a film that is less sensitive to light - The higher the ISO the more sensitive the film is to light. Fundamentally I have been over-exposing every shot by over a stop. This added to the fact that I usually overexpose film by 0.5 to 1 stop anyway means that I have been allowing a lot of/too much light to hit the film.

I am writing this blog with the undeveloped film in my bag. Kodak Portra does have a wide dynamic range and is very forgivable so it will be interesting to see how the images come out.

Here are some of the shots from the over-exposed film. As you can see there are no issues with the exposures of these shots. Obviously, some films are more forgiving than others - Kodak’s Portra being one of them. To prevent this from happening again I have made the most of the flash shoe and used this to hold the film info card.