My name is Andrew, and I am a fine art destination wedding photographer in Italy (Lake Como, Amalfi). I am also the author of the book in Lithuanian language: "The Analogue Film Photography in XXI century", which is a PDF book available for free download HERE. I also shoot 35mm film on the weddings, but mainly B&W. In this article, I will share with you some thoughts on working with Lomography Fantôme Kino 35mm film. You can also support my blog by donating 1-2 euros to my PayPal account. I don't need your money, but a bit of attention, to better understand if these articles are fun to read or not. Thanks to all who donate. All this money I forward to various charities that help children with cancer.
As you may know from my previous blog posts, in October I was collecting various film shots for my book about analogue photography. I tried several quite unusual film stocks, and Lomography Fantôme Kino ISO 8 was one of them. I am not a big fan of B&W photography, but I noticed this film has ISO 8 and this was quite unusual to me, so I decided to test it and share my results with you. In the middle of October I was travelling to a beautiful island Procida (Italy), which is located near Naples and on my way to airport I decided to load this film to capture Naples' street life on this film. Naples is quite dirty city, which surprised me a lot. It feels very moody, grumpy, sad... I don't know how else to call it. But it is quite dirty: a lot of homeless people, armed police and soldiers everywhere, check points, siren sounds here and there, a lot of trash on the streets, a lot of dirty street art with no taste or meaning. Maybe this negative feeling was created by comparing Naples to the towns that I visited on my way during that week: Positano, Amalfi, Procida... OK, there is one thing that I really liked a lot - local pizza! I was always disappointed with pizza in Italy (which is quite odd): they burn it, use strange minimalistic fills and pizza in Italy is not as tasty as pizza in Europe. But in Naples I tried my first pizza, that I liked the most. Well, if you visit Naples, you may get a different experience... about film: the film has ISO 8 which I was surprised by. It was a warm sunny day, but even though, I was uncomfortable with such low ISO settings. My camera is Canon 300v, lens 50mm F/1.8, and even with such fast lens my speed was often 1/60 - 1/30. As soon as I was under the shadow of the buildings, I would have to look for a support for my camera to avoid micro shakes and then some blur in my images. So my conclusion was to avoid ISO 8 film in the future. Let's see what I managed to capture in Naples and I hope you will enjoy my street photography shots (probably first time in my life I did street photography, so hope it is not too bad):
Lomography Fantôme Kino ISO 8
Camera: Canon 300v
Lens: Canon EF 50mm F/1.8 and 135mm F/2
Location: Naples, Italy
Challenges:
Working with ISO 8 is hard. You have to plan the shots a lot. If you are in an open area and there is plenty of sun/light, the film is OK. But if you plan shooting in changing conditions, well - good luck! As you can see from my shots of the houses and the hanging clothes between them, the film does not capture many details in shadow. Just be aware of that. This is a good contrasty film, but for really moody shots. I would avoid such film in "happy family" environment :)
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