Black and White: T-Max 3200 Christmas.

I documented this Christmas party with a Voigtlander Bessamatic SLR loaded with T-Max 3200 film (see the full set at my flickr).  This thing is a beast, it's solid, heavy, tight, and completely mechanical.  That's right, no batteries or anything.  You load the film, wind it up and snap.



As cameras go, the options given are limited.  The lens used was a 50mm Color-Lanthar 2.8.  The EV coupling means that the brightest I could take the pictures at was f/2.8 at 1/30s (at iso-3200).  This would give an EV of 3 (see HERE to measure EV's by eye).  Indoor lit by a candle.  That's basically how dark this place was.

To get my photos, I had to get everyone to sit still.  And there's no second shots, I'll have to trust in my skills and instincts, hoping I got the right image.

Positioning people is important.  Because of the shallow depth of field required for low-light photography (f/2.8 in a "full sensor"), I would tell people to move closer, get tighter, all to get people on the same plane to get everyone sharp.

Film is a lot more forgiving for loss of sharpness than digital though.  Analog blur looks far more pleasing than digital blur.  The hand held, low shutter speed, and not quite focused (low light manual focus through the viewfinder, it's really tough, I had to measure the distance and manipulate the focus ring by eye most of the time) causes all sorts of loss of sharpness.

 See the full set at my Flickr!