After needing to wonder if my Olympus XA was still working after it hit the ground, I wanted a more reliable experience so I loaded my Canon AE-1 with a roll of Kodak Pro Image 100.
I continued to experiment with overexposing my color film and set the ISO on the Canon to 50.
Holly and I went out for a short neighborhood walk and I took a handful of shots using my Canon FD 50mm f/1.4 lens.
The following weekend, we took a walk to see a new-ish art installation, OY/YO by Deborah Kass, outside the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History.
For this outing, I switched to my Canon FD 28mm f/2.8 lens. I had a feeling I would need to shoot a little wider to make sure I was able to get the entire sculpture in the frame, and I was happy with my decision.
Of course, I took a few other photos on the way.
I finished the roll on an early morning, pre-work walk. I wanted to see another new piece of public art, the Love Heals All mural by bklvisions that was installed in response to the mass shooting that took place on South Street in early June.
I continued using my 28mm f/2.8 lens for the rest of the roll. For the first part of my walk, I still overexposed by 1 stop.
Since it was a very bright morning, I decided I probably didn’t need to keep overexposing so I set my ISO to 100 for the rest of the roll.
My experimenting with overexposing my color photos by one stop has been fairly successful, but, as I have noted before, one stop doesn’t tend to make a big difference, which is the reason to do so. At one stop overexposed, you can get a little more detail out of the shadows without blowing out the highlights. The downside, at least with a 100 speed film, is that you need to shoot pretty wide open which may force you to use a slower shutter speed.
In the future, I may be more selective about when to overexpose. I think I’d be more likely to do so with faster film speeds since I found shooting at ISO 50 a little problematic when trying to reconcile the shutter speed. I also doubt I would overexpose on particularly sunny days when the light is overhead and not causing a lot of shadows.
In general, I was pleased with the results from my Canon AE-1 which has turned out to be one of my more reliable film cameras.
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