User Error Files: My First Attempt At Infrared Film Photography.

User Error Files: My First Attempt At Infrared Film Photography.

Disclaimer: This is a first world problem post for sure. An intentional distraction from the insanity out there.

As I mentioned in a recent post camera gear rabbit holes are a thing. They are everywhere. How I got here:

1. Bought a leatherette for a camera.
2. Emailed Hamish a “Hey. This is neat.” note about the leatherette.
3. Hamish replied that he knows the owner, and asked that I write a 35mmc review.
4. Me: Yep. Wrote a review. Checked recent 35mmc posts.
5. I see a post about Rollei Infrared 400.
6. I now want to try Rollei Infrared 400.
7. Visits local camera shop to pick up Infrared film.
   • Chris tells me about Ilford SFX.
   • Purchased Rollei Infrared 400, Ilford SFX, and necessary filters.

And then I stated, more on how this turns out in future posts.

This is the first of those posts. It did not go to plan. But I did not plan that well.

More accurately I rushed my search and decided to wing it.

The good news.

Being rangefinder-ish, where you are not looking through the lens, you can use an available cut filter and still see through the viewfinder.

The flawed assumption.

The Fujfilm GA645 meters through the lens.

It does not.

Had thought this since my similarly rangefinder-ish Contax G1 does. The best I can tell after some research is that the AF sensor array also handles metering duties.

The result.

Blank negative.

Am I upset?

Nope. A perk of developing my own film is that I lost less than 5 minutes of my time and a few dollars and that is it. The risk and potential error are a part of the process. Fortunately after years of developing my own color and B&W film this is my third blank roll. Once I was in a rush and mixed up two tanks resulting in me ruining B&W film with color developer. The second was a mislabeled box of film from a small company calling for CS41 development of B&W film. I called my local camera shop to warn them and they marked the rest of their boxes so no one else had to go through the same. So three blank rolls of B&W film since 2018 is not bad.

So… the fix.

Exposure compensation? I think?

That is what I will try next anyway.

Will report back once I build up the nerve to try the next roll.

Happy capturing.

-ELW