Testing out the CatLabs X Film 80 with my Hasselblad 500 C/M

Some of you may have seen that I’ve not posted on here for several weeks. I had originally planned to blog about using my Olympus Pen FT camera with expired film from the 80s but when I got the film developed, there was nothing on it! (the joys of film photography) so that blog didn’t happen!

You could also say that I have well and truly lost my Photography mojo of late.

There are several reason for this. The first one is that I have not felt overly inspired to take photos. Being in lockdown in the UK has meant that I’ve adhered to the rules of limited time being outside and only walking my dog once a day. I like to visit new places and take photos so it has felt like the longest winter ever for me just being here in Brighton and not really visiting anywhere.

Also, I have recently set up an online craft business around my full time job. This has taken up much of my time and energy at present, to the point where I’ve not even managed to regularly post on my photography instagram page as all my time on instagram has been spent promoting my craft business page and coming up with new ideas and posting on there.

Lastly, I now class winter in the South of England as ‘rainy season’. Every time I had planned to take some photos, it inevitably rained! This was somewhat deflating!

I was also hoping to join the community darkroom again but they are currently not open due to the lockdown.

I have really missed my photography and knew I really needed to pencil in some time to finally take some more photos and get back into the swing of photography!

Luckily it wasn’t raining the other Sunday so whilst taking my dog for a walk on the beach, I decided to take out my Hasselblad with me and the CatLab film, which I had been meaning to use for the best part of a year and was keen to use it before it expired. I also have another roll of this in my fridge so will need to use that soon too.

Once I was out on the beach with my Hasselblad, I realised how much I had missed using this camera. It is such a wonderful camera to use and gives me much joy.

Thankfully, my local lab is still developing film with a drop off and collect service so I was able to get my film developed quite quickly.

I shot the film at ISO 80. It’s still quite dark in the UK so I had to take the photos with an aperture of around F/4 Here are some of the photos I took:

Here are a couple of photos of my dog Daisy. She was too busy having a good time to stop and pose for the camera so the photos unfortunately came out blurry:

Whilst these photos are certainly not my best work, it was nice just getting out and about again with my camera.

I don’t overly love this film since it isn’t contrasty enough as I like in my black and white photography. I found there to be a lot of grey tones in it. I do have one film of this left to use so I think I will do that sooner rather than later. I don’t think I will purchase this film again though as there are other black and white films for my Hasselblad that I prefer more.

I’m hoping going forward, to start taking more photos and the rain should not be as bad soon so I think I will find more opportunities to take my camera outside.