Exposure Testing..

Instant photos are great fun. But not if they are completely white or completely black. In that case they don’t even make very good drinks mats. With this in mind I spent the afternoon measuring light levels and taking pictures using different lenses. It’s my idea of fun. OK?

Anyhoo, I got the results on the left. The top shot was taken with the wide angle lens, and it looks fine. Then we switch to the normal lens and things still look good. And then…..

My telephoto lens has a shutter in it which could be described as “a bit on the slow side”. This lets lots more light in with the hilarious white result you can see in the bottom picture. So, I’m going to have to make some adjustments when I use this lens.

This is something worth keeping in mind when using camera bits which are around 60 years old. Just because the mechanism goes “whirr-click” doesn’t mean that it is going at the right speed. Instant film is extremely picky about the amount of light it needs so a problem that might not show up on more tolerant film stocks becomes horribly obvious when you load up with instant film..