My previous post was about the last roll that I shot in 2022. The logical next step is to write about my first roll for 2023 so who can argue with logic? I did manage to get a break from work for a couple of weeks at Christmas and new years but I didn't go anywhere. There is always a lot to do around at home so I was not bored. This time of the year we are also visited by many small copper coloured butterflies. Now because I was outside doing some work I spotted that the butterflies were being particularly attracted to a callistemon in the front yard. Before they took offense at me getting too close there were probably more than 100 on the flowers. It all looked very bright, striking and worthy of some photos so I grabbed a camera.
I had a roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 inside which I loaded into the F2. The lens for all these shots is a Nikkor 80-200mm f4 ais. I got this lens years ago very cheaply because it has a slight scratch on the rear element. I have always found that it produces really nice results though. If you find an example with good glass I think that it would be a super lens.
My approach with these shots was to keep the shutter speed at 1/250th and they were all at either f4 or f5.6 because of the light. There is not a lot of depth of field at these apertures and they were all shot at the 200mm end of the zoom range. The butterflies obviously think that they are pretty tasty or something because they were inclined to fly off whenever I got too close. No auto focus here, I left the lens set to the closest focus point, one point two meters, and sort of rocked or swayed forward, releasing the shutter when the butterfly came into focus.
Overall I was pretty happy with the results on this roll. They were a little bit under exposed, I haven't figured out if it is the external meter or something else yet but the edge print on this roll came out very light so I'm not really sure. There is some really nice colour going on with the butterflies and the callistemon flowers and lots of that lovely out of focusness that you know I like. The grain on the ultramax is much more obvious than Portra 400 but that is not a bad thing, it looks right with the out of focus areas. A bit of under exposure is going to emphasize that as well.
Thanks for having a look, I'll be back with more thoughts and images soon as I have been doing lots of shooting and scanning this year.
