It’s an unusual decision to pitch a battle in a religious hall with a naked girl; especially if the battle is just as unlikely. The soldiers were a Hasselblad 501 with an 80mm lens, and an Olympus E420 with a 25mm pancake lens, but I let battle commence none the less.
Let’s face it, if you suffer at the hand of creativity you are prone to the less logical side of the brain; making your photographs unfathomable to your average punter. So I set out this week to see if I could get the image I sought as an artist from two very different cameras, the professional’s favourite (Hasselblad) and a high street top seller (Olympus).
Before I begin I must confess that the Hasselblad is so elegant and perfectly tweaked that I felt like it’s fat fingered aunt battering it about – looking a little too clumsy whilst using it. But I was excited by its charms as I flung it about. I'm just scared that it thinks I’m an idiot.
Besides the fact that these two are hardly within the same price range I wanted to know what it would be like as an artist to use a film camera that is hugely expensive and costly with an affordable, economic and practical digital camera like the Olympus E420 all in the same shoot. Would either produce an aesthetic I could use? After all, I am looking for striking images not precision. Precision that you might find scrutinized over in magazines that promote cameras not as art tools but consumer jewellery.
The room was set up with a table in the middle where stood upon it my laptop, a projector and the two cameras on tripods on either side. I began with the Olympus, which had the immediate advantage of ISO change without having to change film backs. You can change film speed with the Haseelblad but to compete with the Olympus you would need 6 backs each loaded with different film. I found I needed 400 ISO more than others and being able to preview its effects on the Olympus had distinct advantages. It also had easy manoeuvrability. I could race around with it and barely notice it was there. I struggled to move the Hasselblad with such grace; suddenly I felt like my hands and feet were made of wood and moving wasn’t nearly as easy.
On the other hand I spent much more time composing shots with the Hasselblad. It became an issue that with every film I would only have 12 chances – 12 shots – which resulted in my becoming more involved with the camera whereas with the Olympus I was far more care free.
I felt the technical difference of the formats when I edited my images. The Four Thirds sensor on the Olympus understandably suffered in comparison to the square format of the Hasselblad. The equivalent measurements are 18 x 13.5mm on the Olympus compared to 60 x 60mm on the Hasselblad. I was bound to smaller output from the digital; although colour accuracy is better due to the way the camera uses white balance settings to measure the white point of an image. The images also felt flatter from the digital in comparison to the film, this again is due to the smaller sensor.
Once finished I developed the images from the Hasselblad and then scanned them. I left all the hairs and scratches visible. I loved the risk of the negative being pierced from the drying process as well as the bend of the negative that created a natural distortion. Organic chances like these are only really found in film as on a digital image it can only be recreated on a computer, which is generally very time consuming and not necessarily as effective and certainly not as authentic.
The Olympus’s pancake lens made portraits difficult but gave me leeway to edit. It became obvious to me that the clarity and starkness of the digital lens showed up my projector’s pixels and gave a whole new reality to the image that almost broke the “Mis en scene” I had created, reminding me that this, after all, is just a girl in front of a projector.
This was the first time I had used both film and digital in the same shoot. I came away feeling more involved with the Hasselblad but convinced of the practicality of digital photography. It wasn’t until I began editing those two sets of images that I could see the charms in both. For me, this only reinforces the idea that an artist will create regardless of his or her tools. So I guess the battle’s over.
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