Dreamland, an evening in Margate
Dreamland, Matt Arnold, 2021
When considering how to create the spaces on which to place my childhood images, I wonder what format to use, film or digital. Would film bring anything to the final result, could this help the look of my images. Black and White film, or perhaps colour film.
I grabbed my trusty Bronica and armed with a roll of colour and a roll of black and white I headed out to do some test shots…
Now, I’ve always loved the look that Medium format can create and also some film stocks. However reviewing these images and even with digital manipulation they are not going to produce the scene I want.
I have in mind a dusk or blue hour look to the spaces that I am trying to create. I want a certain vibe to them. I always think that cities look more interesting at night and take on a different personality. While these are shot during that time, using relatively low speed film to minimise grain the exposure times and aperture choice are certainly giving me some issues. I don’t want camera effects such as shallow depth of field as that will not give me the painterly look I want. I also don’t want star bursts from lights either or overly bright highlights and I want good details in the shadows, as these will also not give the painterly, Edward Hopper and Crewdson images that I want.
Since I also want to chose what to include or exclude from the frames, and I will be shooting in a busy space, I will need many exposures to be able to remove what I want from the scene and leave in that which I do want. I have to recognise that I don’t have a Crewdson budget and cannot get streets closed and relight neighbourhoods because I’m doing a shoot!
I also don’t want motion blur of clouds, so that will drive the shutter speed in a lot of cases. Here I felt too limited by the shutter speed and film speed being dictated and in a lot of cases not being able to juggle the variables as I wished. My shooting process is normally to select an aperture for the depth of field that I want to use for my scene, the select a shutter speed for inclusion or exclusion of any motion blur, then finally balance this with ISO.
Here with the film speed dictating what I can and can’t do, plus the shallow depth of field required in low light to achieve a decent exposure was all to limiting. Looking at the final images, I don’t think they will bring to the table what I need.
At least I have tried to see if Medium format film is the way to go to complement 1970s slides that were badly taken photographs to begin with. It’s back to the digital camera and a process is now understood.