Frugal Film Project 2024 - September - 35mm

 For my September roll of Kentmere 400 35mm film shot with my Olympus OM101 and 50mm f/2 power focus lens, I decided to be daring and shoot the roll using a filter on the lens. Coloured filters affect black and white film in several ways. Yellow, Orange and Red filters can darken a bright sky and alter the tonal range of grey to brighten foliage and lighten reds depending on the filter you choose.

A yellow filter is the classic choice and is quite subtle in the changes it makes to your photos. A red filter makes more dramatic changes, it can darken a blue sky to black and makes the clouds pop! An orange filter is in between the two and is a favourite of mine when I fancy using filters, but this time I wanted to experiment and went for the red one. There's more info about filters, courtesy of IlfordPhoto, that you can read by visiting their website using the link below.

I chose it because we had a mix of cumulus clouds and hazy contrails on the day and I felt a red filter would cut through that haze and add some drama to compositions I have shot a thousand times before. I would normally use the park as my classroom, but on this day I felt the power lines and poles would make for an interesting study with the clouds and blue sky backing them up.

I have used orange and yellow filters with Kentmere 400 in the past and got some decent results, but this was the first time I went for the red filter. It was also a great test of the metering ability of my OM101. I like the built in light meter and program mode on the OM101 as it produces nicely balanced exposures, but I had no idea how it would cope with a red filter, so this was going to be a steep learning curve.

I wandered up the farm road and began taking photos as soon as I reached the first pylon. I photographed the farm house across the valley from my location, my favourite power lines and pylons also got a few photos too. The big trees at the side of the farm road always have me looking for a composition or two and of course the gnarly trees that form a field boundary were also photographed.

By the time I reached the stile that allows access to the footpath across the wheat field I had finished the roll. I thought it was a 36 shot roll, but I had loaded a 24 shot roll of Kentmere 400 and to be honest I was glad of that. I often struggle to finish a 36 shot roll and the shorter roll was a welcome change. I rewound the film and put my camera away until I arrived back home.

I developed my roll of Kentmere 400 in HC110 for 8 minutes in 1+47 dilution E at 20 celcius and soon had my film hanging to dry in my bathroom. When it was dry I digitised it with my trusty Nikon D700, Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro lens, Valoi 35mm film holder, Pixl-Latr and led light pad. I processed the Raw files with Affinity Photo 2.

Here's a few of my favourite photos from my September roll of Kentmere 400 shot with my OM101 through a red filter. I was expecting something different from this experiment, but not the results I got. The red filter saw through the haze and gave me some nice photos, but I was hoping for darker skies to make the clouds pop more than they have.

Maybe it's because I cheaped out on the filter or maybe Kentmere 400 just doesn't have a great sensitivity on the infrared end of the spectrum. It's still a great film, cheap enough to experiment with and I had fun doing it. As always I have placed them and more in an album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

Using Colour Filters for B&W film photography 
Frugal Film Project 2024 September - 35mm