Shooting: A Praktica LTL And Expired Konica 400
I’d like to do a little series here where I share some photos that were taken just for the fun of photography. No objective or mission in mind. Just shootin’.
Pushing yourself, giving yourself limitations and trying to work within them is a great way to practice and master a technique or help learn a specific concept you’re trying to grasp. However, lets not forget that this can just be a hobby.
Photography can be so relaxing and zen. I feel there is a fine line, a balance, in “working” for your photography and just having fun. I do believe it’s important to take your photography serious and really work to improve your skills. But I also believe that there’s a time and place for sheer fun in photography.
Taking a strange camera, loading it with some weird expired film and just seeing what happens can be so freeing and can potentially produce some great work that you may have not otherwise come across. This is exactly what I did with my Praktica LTL and a roll of expired Konica film.
The Shoot
I shot 2 rolls of expired Konica 400, rated at 100 (expired in 2003). I’ve shot lots of konica 200, but I’ve had 3 rolls of this 400 kicking around forever. Hoping for some good and grainy color shifts, I looked for scenes that would suit that well. The film certainly delivered, however the camera did not.
I’ve shot a couple rolls through this camera before and it’s been having an issue with the shutter. As I advance, the shutter will slip, resulting in a cocked shutter, but no way to fire it. So I have to remove the lens, flip up the screen, and trip the shutter with my finger (I’ll go into depth with this perhaps in a different article).
The other issue this camera has, is the mirror at times doesn’t want to flip up all the way, resulting in a half exposed image. I could tell it was happening while shooting. I wasn’t hearing that satisfying mirror slap, but rather a weak click. Sure enough, half exposed images..
Now, I knew all of this about the camera before I loaded it with these 2 rolls. I’ve been having this issue for a while and the camera has just been sitting there, so I figured I’d shoot some frames that weren’t too precious, and on some film that I got for dirt cheap.
The Result
Due the camera issues, I ended up getting only a handful of frames. In the end, it was a ton of fun and is one of the reasons I love shooting expired film. It’s just fun to shoot with no real intention and not really sure whats going to happen. With expired film, I’ve found that every frame can be drastically different from one another. Subtle differences in light can have drastically different effects on the film. This fickleness of the film, combined with the unreliability of the camera was destined for interesting results, so here they are.
I hope you enjoyed this little series of just taking a camera out and shooting for fun! Let me know in the comments if you’d like to see articles like these more often!