When Things Go Wrong

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an underexposed black and white photo of the sky full of birds in flight. there are very prominent light leaks all over the image.

so yeah. that happened.

i recently took my yearly trip to shetland, to visit with my partner's family and enjoy the vast, glorious landscapes and beautiful beaches. excited, i took my trusty Nikon EM SLR and so many rolls of film, all different. i envisioned wonderful results - rolling hills, clear water; dark, moody black and white images of derelict croft houses and wacky colour shifted fields of purple and skies of green.

well, i did get those, but with a pretty obvious side effect.

a black and white photo. in front of the sea and hills is a rocky outcropping with wooden fence posts sticking out vertically. most of the detail is hidden by the overwhelming light leaks throughout.
a vibrant colour photo of a large ship in the harbour. there are bright yellow light leaks affecting the image, especially over the ship itself.
a colour shifted colour photo of a small boathouse next to the teal green sea, surrounded by purple grass. a large light leak to the left overshadows the whole thing.

light leaks!

all film cameras are designed to be perfectly dark once you close the back. photo film works by exposing light to the film - depending on the camera, you as the photographer get to decide how much light you let in via shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. in order for your photo to be taken, you need a perfect pitch dark environment for your film so that when you press the shutter the right amount of light gets in.

unbeknownst to me, my trusty camera's light seals had degraded since the last time i'd used it. i have no idea how this could possibly have happened but that doesn't really matter. what matters is that they did degrade, and were now letting light in through the back door of the camera. 

now, did i take perfect shots every time? not at all! i'm still very new to all this and am learning as i go. but whether the shots were perfectly exposed or whether they were under or over, whether they were perfectly in focus and straight or cockeyed and blurry, one thing remains: those blinding spots of pure white, yellow or pink hiding a lot of the image.

a photo of a tall wooden power line support, following the lines as they travel throughout the grassy landscape into the distance. a light leak on the left takes up most of the frame.
a photo of the land taken from the sea, with a lighthouse in the foreground and three metal masts of some sort in the background. horizontal yellow light leaks ruin the whole thing.
three white and red masts stand on the land behind the sea. massive yellow light leaks cloud the whole picture.

when i got back the four rolls of film from the lab, to say i was thoroughly gutted is a pretty massive understatement. not for nothing, but film photography is not a hobby which is particularly friendly to your wallet. on top of the cost of developing the film, i'm also counting the money i spent on buying the film in the first place. i'm not going to say how much i've tallied up as wasted, but it's significant to me, who is on a very strict budget. each payday i put a little bit into my camera fund. i don't even want to know how many months it took me to save up to receive those results in my inbox.

it's been over a fortnight since i got the shots back from the lab, and i can look at them objectively now. a lot of my photos from a place i've got to wait a year to revisit are basically unusable. some, i've learned to love. one thing you can say is that these shots are undeniably analogue. you don't get shots like this - either deliberately or otherwise - from a digital camera. 

end of the day, what you feel about your shots is totally and fully unique to you. i'm a lomographer, i'm encouraged to embrace the mistakes, to revel in the imperfect. and usually, i do! my Lubitel 2, a bakelite TLR camera from the 1960s, is lousy for light leaks, and i love the images i get back. this time, however, i took my nikon em because it's a good camera. it takes great images, and that's what i wanted when put in a unique situation surrounded by unspoilt nature and wonderful landscapes. 

a black and white photo of a boat on a rocky beach. there are prominent light leaks throughout.
a colour shifted photo of some sheep on a field in front of a loch. the film has shifted the green grass to purple, and the blue waters and sky to green. there's a faint light leak to the left.
a colour shifted view of two tunnels under a road through which water flows. purple grasses on either side, and a light leak in the middle and to the right.
a generic landscape shot. the sea is in the background and the foreground is full of orange rocks. there's a massive white light leak to the left.

here's the thing about film photography: these things will happen. a great deal of the equipment is old. like old old. my youngest camera was invented when i, myself, was around 2 years old. and the thing about old equipment is that it breaks and lets you down. this is just something you have to come to terms with as a beginner to film photography. it's something i've had to come to terms with exceedingly recently, being blissfully unaware that anything was wrong as i wantonly snapped away. 

i know film photographers who are adept at makeshift repairs - basically, you're gonna want black electrical tape - and you can buy light seal kits online. i'm not a handy person and when i shopped my camera around for repairs i found it infinitely cheaper to just get a replacement camera body (my lens is absolutely fine). one upside to film photography is that the equipment itself at the budget and beginner end is pretty reasonably priced, so i've bought a replacement. i've put a roll of Ilford HP5 in there to test it, just to make sure it's light leak free. should it all be fine, i'll be back in action.

so yeah. there's no real conclusion here. being skint all the time, i don't take holidays often, and so going on one and getting maybe 6 useable photos out of 4 rolls of film left me somewhat devastated. but we live, we learn. tomorrow is another day. on that note, have a moody picture of a graveyard.

a photo of a graveyard in the shadow of a grassy hill. all the gravestones look blank as I've taken the shot from the back. a light leak vertically shines down the middle of the image.

if you're buying film in the uk, i can't recommend Analogue Wonderland enough. they sell all sorts of weird and wonderful film, and if you follow that link and buy literally anything you'll get a coupon for a FREE roll of Kentmere Pan 400, a decent quality black and white film (all the black and white shots in this post are Kentmere Pan 400). and when you've finished your roll, send it off to Gulabi - they're cheap, provide high quality scans, and they're super fast too. 


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