Film on film on film on fi…

It’s 2025! Another year of snapping photos, hopefully. We’re three weeks in and so far I’ve exclusively shot film…I’ve just been enjoying the process, the physical nature of a negative, and that “rediscovery” of a shot after it’s been developed and printed.

Anyway, as I’ve mentioned before we live close to Garden of the Gods. It has a couple of trails that are high bang for the buck. I’ve been going up to the Ridge Trail Loop and using it as a test bed for getting my film setup locked in. I’ve been using the Fujifilm GF670 and it’s been fantastic.

Leica MP, Voigtlander 75mm f1.9

(Obviously, I use this in tandem with the Leica MP and a 28 & 75 Voigtlander combo.)

In addition to the camera I’ve “tested” a few different films so far: Ilford FP4+, Ilford HP5+, Ilford Delta 100, and Kodak T-Max 400. No surprise to me, my favorite is FP4+. Delta 100 is a close second but it’s more expensive and I honestly can’t tell the difference on 120 negatives. All of them are more than usable - and “testing” with two rolls isn’t really testing - but it’s helped to check my assumptions.

Fujifilm GF670

In addition to ~~testing~~ trying various films, this last week I decided to be a Real Boy :tm: and took a notebook out with me while I was shooting. I had a few questions:

Is the GF670 rangefinder aligned right? Specifically at infinity. I’ve had shots in the past that I was sure were at infinity and came out blurry. (It is; “infinty” and “a couple hundred meters” are different focus points on this camera and it matters that you get it right.)
What is the effective handheld shutter speed for sharp photos? The lens is a 90mm, so I’d expect ¹⁄₁₂₅ or faster. I handhold a lot. (¹⁄₁₂₅ is good, ¹⁄₂₅₀ is better.)
How does FP4 react to overexposure? How many stops of usable dynamic range do I have? (Almost as well as HP5+. 3-4 stops, but it varies.)

In practice, I shot two rolls and recorded details about the shots immediately after. About one roll was on the tripod and the rest was handheld. Every shot was generic and lame but I had lots of technical detail and feel like I now know what the camera and film will do in various lighting conditions. I’ll probably repeat the tests in a few weeks for sanity.

Fujifilm GF670

A couple of other notes:

If I’m very careful in shooting and scanning, my 6x7 shots have roughly the same on-screen quality as my Ricoh GRIII(x). Tonality, depth of field, etc is way different…but sharpness and just at-a-glance quality? Almost indistinguishable. If nothing else, it speaks well of the Ricohs.
I hate the tripod tool on the Peak Design Travel Tripod. It keeps falling out of the “holster” on the tripod. It’s also $20 (!!!) to replace.
I’ve been using a Sekonic L-558 (that was given to me) to spot meter. I’m not convinced it’s better than just using an app.
I still run and gun with the Leica MP. Even my best 35mm scans are have noticably worse quality than the GF or any of my digital cameras. I don’t care that much.

All in all, it’s been a good couple of weeks of “doing photography”. I’m pretty run and gun most of the time and doing tripod-based medium format work is a shift and I’m enjoying the process. And just in time! My next international trip - which is about 50% a photography trip - is in a few weeks and I’ll be taking both the GF670 and Leica MP. It will be my first specifically-for-my-photography trip…and my first 100% film trip.

Until then!