We are entering the rainy season in Singapore now, and film rolls are not easy to finish. So the roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 I loaded in the Leica M4 took a little time to finish. Particularly with a F4 lens and less light, not all opportunities are good,
I very rarely shot the Ultramax before, it is a quite cheap film you can still buy in supermarkets in France. My friend Felix, gave me a roll last time I met him, and he get a quantity of them for the same reason.
The Leica M4 has no meter so I used my new Sekonic handheld light meter. All in it is doing quite a good job.
The Ultramax end up being quite a different beast compare to the Portra 400. The grain is more accentuated, the colors get a bit more pink / green hue, the film I got from the lab was a bit more curly, but I am not sure it affected the scanning (with Epson v800).
The 21mm gave good results again, thanks to the viewfinder again I think. The vertical shots of cross roads gave what I called “dynamic” in my last post; I think they would benefit in being shot a bit lower, like wait level…
… but OK hand metering, range-finding (or pre-focusing or hyper focusing) and view finding are already a lot of actions for a single shot.
With the 21mm the subject is often too far as above, unless you come really close to unsuspected subject …
… for everybody’s fun.
Or willing models as above.
Or you meet the Fuji Instax team (I did not enter the discussion about Fuji vs Kodak with them).
I also had the opportunity to take a few shots at night in a fancy fair and I must say the result is quite pleasant. A bit Saturated, but it looks the film reacted well to artificial light.
Interesting story here, aspirant photographer and aspiring make up artists from Indonesia using their friend as a model.
A few weeks after the first shot back at the SMU (Singapore Management University).
In case you directly jumped here: all shots on Kodak Ultramax 400 (not expired), with Voigtlander 21mm F4, VC viewfinder 21-25mm on Leica M4.
Waex99 PhotoBlog 