ektachrome (or the first medium format shot that victoria has ever taken) (2023) (Patreon)

I got my first roll of 120 film that I've ever shot in my life back from the lab. It was Ektachrome (E100VS) that had definitely expired that I shot on a folding-lens Agfa Isolette 6x6 that my friend gave me. I didn't actually like how most of the roll came out; it turns out I had a harder time holding it steady than I realized so a lot of the shots are shaky, the shadows are all purple and unrecoverable because slide film has the world's narrowest usable contrast area and I had no meter so I was guessing at sunny sixteenths in very varied lighting, and the fact it's just a viewing window camera meant I had a harder time lining up shots with it than usual (I've never actually shot any rangefinders where I was trying to be really good with the photos; just shitty point-and-shoots). And, of course, it's not even a rangefinder. It's just zone focus. Measured solely in meters. 

Uphill battle!

However, I got one shot I truly like. This is my roommate, Antigone; the two of us dressed up to ride a steam train together, and this was the final shot I had left on the roll after the train ride. The lens obviously isn't a huge fan of the broad daylight shining on it and I wish I'd compensated to shoot a little more for shadow instead of highlights, but it has gorgeous bokeh. This is one of the only shots on the roll I didn't just stop way down for, and I wish I'd shot more like this, because this was at... f/5.6-ish I want to say? And it looks great like this. 

an infinity-focused shot. mountains out of a train window. not bad but not what I'd want to blow a medium-format shot on, you know?

another infinity-focused shot. I got some of the colors back with some curves fuckery, and that part is quite pretty, but the lens doesn't seem to love infinity-focus. It is from 1950-something though so like, I get it

I wish I had focused on my friend instead of the distance, but I wanted to show the sense of motion. also I wish I'd exposed another EV here for a little more shadow detail but I didn't really think enough about slide latitude as I shot these

Stopped down focused to infinity this camera is fairly boring, honestly, but opened up and zone-focused properly I think it would be a phenomenal film camera.

I currently have ten rolls (two propacks) of 120 Vericolor III, cold-stored since the eighties, sitting in my fridge. Vericolor III is one of those "god-I-miss-it-films" that was replaced by Portra 160 sometime in the nineties, which means that the expiry date of the stuff currently in my fridge is in the late eighties. This E100VS was kind of "eh, it's old"; this Vericolor III batch has been tested and is known to be good. I want to get solely perfect shots on it; anything less is a huge waste. The question now is whether I take a roll on the Agfa, knowing what I know now about its lens characteristics and pray that I can continue to zone-focus (and frame!) correctly, or if I wait until I spend some actual money on a really nice medium-format camera where I'm more confident in what I'm doing. 

I am leaning towards putting a roll through the Agfa and being very careful with it. I am not 100% certain yet, but hopefully, these are at least fun to look at in the meantime.