I only took a small break from work after all the graduate film shoots, and went up to London for a fashion photoshoot. I shot stills on digital and 35mm film, for Bianca and Theo, final year Fashion Design students at the University of Brighton. These pictures would be used for their submissions for Graduate Fashion Week, as well as part of their coursework assessments.
The location was an apartment building close to Barbican Centre, and we had three different setups, and for all of them I used an Aputure 120d Mark II, softened with unbleached muslin for the corridor and white diffusion paper for the stairwell.
As far as the cameras went, for digital I used a Nikon D90 paired with a Sigma 18-35mm and a Tiffen Black ProMist 1/4 filter. For analogue, I had more variety: a Nikon TW2 point-and-shoot with Kodak Gold 200, a Nikon F301 with Kodak Portra 400 and a Nikon FM2 with Kodak T-Max 400. The lenses I used for the F301 and FM2 were Nikon AI-S primes: 24mm f2, 35mm f2 and 50mm f1.4.
Maisie modelled two white garments from Bianca's collection and two black garments from Theo's.
I was pleasantly surprised by the results from the T-Max, as I had never used that film stock or that camera before. The FM2 felt so organic and was such a joy to operate, being fully mechanical, but the built-in exposure meter didn't seem accurate enough so I used an external one, a Sekonic L308S. The only other black & white film I shot previously was Ilford HP5+, which seemed to be more contrasty, while the Kodak has more dynamic range and finer grain. And the same goes for the Portra, as well, but that is no surprise: the skintones are really nice and the overall look is very soft and natural. I also snuck in a few shots from the Gold shot in the TW2, but I can't bear to put the digital side by side with these!
This was a really interesting experience, shooting film for someone other than myself, and there was obviously the pressure of "What if I didn't load the roll properly and it comes back blank?". Luckily, the nervousness didn't last for long as it only took 3 days to get the scans from the lab after I sent off the rolls, top service from FilmDev!