I Shot a Roll of Kodak T-MAX 100 on Canon A1 by Marie Lagabbe
Trying a new kind of film is one of my favourite things. I usually use the same rolls over and over again when a discover a new cheap emulsion that suits me, but I’m always really happy about the getting chance to discover something new. That’s why I wanted to be a part of this amazing testing opportunity provided by On Film Only and Nation Photo, Paris.
Most of the time, I don’t use low ISO film because I use natural lights and shoot inside. I’m more used to push 400 ISO film to 1600 so I can do anything I want and have the kind of big grain I really love. But I jumped on the opportunity to try T-MAX 100, to see if I could push it to 200 and use it for an inside double exposure shooting just as I usually do. And it worked fine.
For this roll, I asked for the help of @helegramy, who is also a great analogue photographer, and I used the Christmas decorations of the city of Strasbourg for my double exposures.
When you live in Strasbourg, Christmas can be a very annoying and anxiety inducing time of the year for a lot of different reasons (you can’t go in town without being searched by the police, they are tourists and people everywhere, you can’t shop or eat in a restaurant anymore), but I wanted to show that it could also be a time of warmth, of magic and cosiness.
Also, I had the pleasure to get some small texts written by @hana_bolkonski on my notebook, so I could shoot this notebook as well to do some extra double exposures tests with textures, words, and my pictures on it.
This kind of experimentation is what I like in film photography. This is how I test my rolls, by pushing them to the edge of what they are supposed to do. This time, I guessed the atmosphere in the pictures would be grey and soft, but actually not that much.
On most pictures the contrasts are totally fine, even if some of the double exposures are greyish because of the texture, and even with low lights and the film being pushed, the grain is actually quite delicate (or at least, in comparison to my usual work). I think the film could handle to be pushed a little bit more, and next time I’ll definitely try to push it up to 800 ISO.
I shot this series with my Canon A1 so I could test it as well since it had been repaired a little earlier.
Thanks again to the team of On Film Only, and to Nation Photo, for this great experience.
You can find more of my work on Instagram : @36poses.eu
Marie Lagabbe is a french photography lover. During her senior high-school year she discovered analog photography with her mother’s AE-1 camera, making her first steps in enlarging pictures in the darkroom of a workshop in her hometown, Aubervilliers. Thirteen years later it is now at home that she’s working, testing, improving and experimenting around this media. Always in search of new techniques, textures and material, she reveals her dark but also colorful world. Collages, drawings, multiple exposures, filmsoup are all elements that feed her rich and fantastical universe of symbols. Marie LBB is now 30 years old and currently lives in Alsace. Visit my website here www.36poses.eu
