We’re now six rolls deep into my photography hobby. For this roll, I looked into pushing film. To push film is to measure the light as if the film is at a higher ISO than it really is (intentionally underexposing the frames) then overdeveloping by increasing the development time. Why would we do this? By pushing the film, we can shoot in lower light conditions, which is nice especially as the sun sets earlier and earlier in New Zealand. Pushing film also tends to increase film grain and contrast. Surprise, surprise, this is a continuation of my quest for high contrast skies! In fairness, I’m also simply interested in trying out a new technique.
Camera: Ricoh KR-10 Super
Lens: SMC Pentax-A 50mm f/2
Film: Ilford HP5+ shot at ISO 800 (pushed one stop).
Post Processing: GIMP
What a light leak! This was likely from when I extracted the film leader from the can before development, since it affected this frame and one more early in the roll.
I liked this composition a lot, so I took a couple of exposures. The sky was overcast, so I wasn’t expecting much in terms of contrast of the clouds, but what we got was nice enough. You can see the slightly more pronounced film grain here, compared to the previous rolls of HP5+. 
And here is the second light leak, which is much more subtle than the first. This artifact is actually pleasant to me! It’s a nice reminder that we’re working with film, without totally destroying the photograph. 
Macro flower– oh. No, nevermind. That’s not a macro flower at all. 
There probably was not nearly enough light for this shot, as I was down a dark alley. Notice the wall in front of me is totally unresolvable! However, I could not turn down the clouds here. The contrast is simply too nice, so we must grin and bear it. 
A wildlife shot. 
The reflection of the sun over the river Leith. Very happy with the star shaped glare, a ghost of the aperture. 
You may have seen “That Wanaka Tree”; a lonely tree in Lake Wanaka that has recently become extremely popular to photograph. Here is a similar kind of composition, but looking over Dunedin harbor. And what a beauty it is! 
The waves here are nice. I recall struggling to capture the water in some of my earliest photographs and failing miserably due to motion blur. How far we have come, in the sense that now I know I just need a metric tonne of light. 
I liked the aesthetics of this footbridge, so I tried to capture a few frames of it. 
This, and the following frame, tried to look down the cables in a pleasing way. I thought, at the time, that I needed a larger field of view than my 50mm could handle. 
However, after sitting on the problem for a couple of days, I realized I could have just… shot in portrait. What a fool I am. 
I also obtained some macro extension tubes for my Ricoh during this roll. And boy, what a powerful tool they are! Extension tubes move the lens further from the sensor, increasing magnification and decreasing the minimal focusing distance. On the other hand, extension tubes prevent the lens from focusing to infinity, and also reduce the light taken in by the camera, requiring wide apertures or slower shutters. Still, I like the effect! 
The remaining frames in this roll are all from my walk up Signal Hill. It was a pleasant enough walk, and the sun was out all day, so plenty of photos to be had! 
The contrast here was nice enough. The light foreground has plenty of detail, and the shadows further down the path don’t impact the composition too much. 
I tried to compose this shot to have the dead and burned tree frame the living trees. I think it came out okay, but there’s a little too much going on to be truly great. 
Ah, macro flower, my beloved. 
This was another experiment of mine, trying to extract details from the shadows (tree and needles) while still focusing on a heavily backlit subject. I think it came out well, so I was very happy with this! 
A lovely sprig of holly growing alone. Check out the background here — the light filtering through the leaves has a nice bokeh from the aperture, which I think was somewhere around f/2.8 or so. 
A lovely landscape with nice framing. The clouds contrasted well, especially compared to previous HP5+ rolls. Maybe this pushing thing isn’t so bad! 
This looks like a pretty… fungi… 
This looks like a pretty… pinecone? Ah, that doesn’t work quite as well. 
Here’s a failure of a frame. The sky was bright, backlighting an already dark tree, and my film was pushed to ISO 800. Why did I think I would get any details at all? Oh well. 
It’s subtle, but look closely for the spiderweb in this photo. The detail is lovely! 
I was lying right down in the dirt for this, but boy howdy did this hill get steep quick! I had to try and capture that somehow. 
And now we are at the summit! There’s a few water spots on these frames, but the views more than make up for it. 
Okay, more than a few water spots. I was still working on my drying technique! 
They say photography requires patience. For this shot, I waited fifteen minutes to get a composition without people. There’s a slight correlation between great panoramic views of the city and popularity with tourists. Inconceivable. 
