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As any frequent visitor to this little photo blog knows... I kind of have a little crush on the Impossible Project and all of the films they have released over the past couple of years. I have made my best effort to get a hold of and try each different version of their film to test and eventually post about here on my blog. To the best of my knowledge, I'm pretty close to having shot almost every film they have released... though I know there are a few I've probably missed. Now, for the most part, I have had positive experiences with each film despite the little problems here or there. This new Impossible Project PX600 COOL film though, well... it has me wanting to gush in a whole new way.
Yesterday, after finishing up a few older packs of film that I've been storing in my fridge, I finally loaded up the one pack of this film that I have. I took two images while out shooting some video content on location and instantly saw the potential of this film and how beautiful it could be, but, I wasn't truly sold on the extent of how great this film really is until I brought it back into the studio to shoot some controlled setups - Those two images are what I'm posting here today. Each was shot using controlled natural light with an SX70 Sonar, an ND pack filter, using a tripod with the lighten/darken wheel one notch to dark.
As you can see, this film is crisp and has a beautiful dynamic range. So far I've seen very few flaws of any kind in this film or it's development. Everything seems to consistently come out evenly developed without any patches, snakeskin, funky highlights or dark bars running through the image. Really, I've been a fan of TIP's black and white films from the beginning and the PX100 has recently been one of my favorites, but, this new PX600 Cool may just be the best film the Impossible Project has put out to date. This is the kind of stuff that makes me happy to be a part of shooting, testing and experiencing the growth of this company in real time and I can't wait to see how far they can push it in the future.
I've recently been testing a black Polaroid SX70 Model 3 that I picked up a couple months back as a project camera. I planned for this to be my second re-skinning project, but, I wanted to run a pack of film through it first to be sure that everything was functioning properly. Since I was completely unsure of how this camera would function (and because it's been sitting in my fridge a while) I decided to use a pack of old Impossible Project PX100 Orange Flash.
Originally when I got this film it was pretty much like shooting today's PX100, except a bit more contrasty and with orange tones to it instead of black and white. Now, after a long while in the fridge, this film has become very, very contrasty - In most photos, there are almost no mid-tones to be had. On the bright side, I was still able to squeeze a few decent shots out, and, more importantly, I happily discovered that this camera functions just fine.
Keep an eye out for the future re-skin of this camera... but in the meantime, here are some of the other Orange Flash photo successes.
This morning I spent a couple hours over at the West Side Market in Ohio City. We were there filming a video that we are putting together for Positively Cleveland that highlights some of the city's best, biggest and most interesting attractions. Since the Market's a corner stone of the city and has been there for 100 years now (there will be a huge centennial celebration later this summer), we knew it was an obvious choice when it came to filming locations. Of course we couldn't do it alone, so, we invited along a big Cleveland advocate and one of our favorite Bloggers (Cleveland's a Plum) Alexa Marinos to be our star for the day.
Unfortunately, since the video is still a work in progress over the next few weeks I won't be able to share any of that just yet. What I do have (big surprise) is some instant photos that I took while I was there. Today's film of choice was some Old Generation PX680 Color Shade from the Impossible Project. I've only shot one of these Old Gen packs previously (which was something of an experiment) but I was pleasantly surprised with how well this film still works. This time around I was shooting with my usual SX-70 Sonar with an ND pack filter and, even though the indoor shots were a bit dark, I found that the color of this film was still pretty outstanding.
I still have half of this pack of film remaining in my camera so (fingers crossed) I'll be posting some more shots in the near future...
Just some quick shots with some of Impossible Projects PX 100 Silver Shade film. I took this top one in the office's comp room with available window light using an SX-70. This is technically test film, as I bought a bunch of it when it became available originally, but I think it might be my last pack. Either way, I think this might be my favorite film from Impossible thus far (it's tough to choose though between this and the PX 600 Black Frame). Nearly every photo I take with this film comes out beautifully, and, I can only imagine it's just going to continue to get better.
And, for the road, here's another on the PX 100 that I took while out on a walk a few weeks back. I was walking out by the lake and the Seagulls were flying everywhere. I only had one shot left in the pack but wanted to try and get an image of just one bird on a blank sky. I had to completely guess at a focus point and try to time it just right - it's not the best shot in the world, but there's something about it I like. It reminds me of that day, the weather, and the quiet walk along the water... really, isn't that what this stuff's all about?
The end of last week offered up some weather that was nice enough to allow me a chance to get out and shoot. As usual, once I actually had a load of camera's in the car I had a difficult time finding things that I wanted to shoot. I think that part of me is always worried about wasting film and so I become extremely choosey on what I will and will not shoot.
At the end of the day, or at the end of my drive I should say, I ended up in a familiar spot. I've shot St. Theodosius a few times, but, since I hadn't shot it with my Crown Graphic I decided it wouldn't hurt to take another photo. It really is a great looking place with some beautiful architecture. This photo was taken on Fuji's FP 100-C45 peel-apart film at about 75 degrees with a 120 second development time.
Personally, I really like this film. It appears as though it is consistently a little washed and milky, but, I'm not sure if that's just me, the development timing, the temperature or the batch of film that I have... Either way, I usually end up liking the results.
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