Bubblegum?
As I’ve been enjoying shooting with my medium format camera, I bought I couple of different 120mm films from Analogue Wonderland when payday arrived.
I was drawn in by the promise of ‘added tone producing sweet colours’ using this Dubblefilm Bubblegum film, so decided to ignore the ludicrous price tag and give it a go.
The name Bubblegum and the sample images made me think the vibe would be pastel pinks.
I have since learned that this is Kodak Gold 200 that has been tinted in some way - also I think the tinting process may also then mean I couldn’t get away with my usual under/over exposing malarky as overexposing reduces the effect.
Packaging though…very cute.
I went to visit my family for Easter Sunday so shot a roll over the course of the day, again, was using my estimated version of the sunny 16 rule and tried a couple of double exposures too, with varying results…
When the scans came back the first thing I noticed was everything was less pink and more… green looking…potentially this is due to my less than accurate approach to attempting to expose it correctly.
So, not going to lie, I tinkered about with the tones in photoshop to bring out the pinks I was hoping for, and cropped a couple as I thought they looked less busy cropped in tighter.
I think the real answer to getting this film to do what it is supposed to though, is probably nailing the exposure in camera.
I think I should invest in a light meter at some point if I am going to keep using a camera that doesn’t have one built in.
I’m probably happiest with the first photo of the roll of me and my nephew with our cameras.
Ended up snapping a couple of shots on digital, and whilst waiting on my film being developed…also went a bit on the pink side with the edits.
Instagram must have noticed I was chasing a pink vibe though, as about a day later I stumbled across @queenofthegrain - experimental small batch film created by photographer Kali McMillan (www.kalimcmillan.com).
I instantly had buy a roll of the ‘pink lady’ 35mm.
I’ve never tried a souped film before so I’m excited for some unexpected results and this one promises ‘vibrant pink’. There’s a couple of labs in the UK that have a souped film developing option, so if I like it, I could always try making my own photography soup - yum.
