Giving a “Faulty” Camera Another Chance – #FullRollFriday – by Holly Gilman

I’m shocked to say that it’s not even been 2 months since my first article was published on 35mmc (at the time of writing this, that is). I think it feels like longer because I have gained so much from being part of this community.

One of the benefits of sharing my work, whether I consider it a success or not, is that it makes me look at said work differently and inspires me to do things that I wouldn’t have thought of. One such instance of this has been the desire to pick up my Exa 1C again.

I shared a roll from this camera and was prompted by so many to give the camera another shot, despite its “flaws”. And, actually, just writing the article got me thinking about trying it again. So, here we are with another roll shot through the Exa 1C.

If you’ve read the previous article you will know that this is a 35mm SLR which has a problem with overlapping images. I hadn’t realised this when shooting it the first time, but it gave the images an unusual twist. Because I hadn’t noticed any problems when shooting it first time around, I made sure to be much more vigilant this time; listening every time I wound on, and being incredibly gentle for each wind.

I could hear the film advance skipping as I wound on and it very bizarrely does this every 3 images. It doesn’t matter how gentle I am in the using the film advance lever, it always skips for 2 and then winds on correctly. This time around I managed to shoot the full roll. Last time something went wrong and it only gave me 12 shots; I can’t be sure whether I happened to notice the skipping and thought I had hit the end of the roll or whether something did actually jam (I suspect the former).

For this I used Foma 100. It’s a film stock I have never shot before, I would have liked to use Ilford HP5 or FP4 as these are film stocks I know much better. Using a film stock I know well may have helped me in my analysis of the negatives but I don’t think it has mattered too much.

And so, here is the full roll of images. I really love hearing which images other people like and why, so please, please do comment and let me know.

The above, of the church is one of my favourites.

I really like the one above because I took the photo and then turned around and took the photo of my friend photographing the same building.

Another favourite from this roll. I knew I was in an overlapping section so I took a few shots of the same building from different views.

Another favourite from the roll. This worked exactly as I had planned, which I didn’t think would be possible given the nature of the camera!

Finally, I would be incredibly grateful to anyone who would like to help me towards my dream of building a darkroom. I have set up a “buy me a coffee” account and all the funds raised will be put towards the project. I have plans to make some prints of my work available for sale soon as well. You can read about my plans here, and I will be documenting every step of the way. I am also gratefully accepting any advice or even used equipment should anyone have anything they wish to pass on!

If you like my work you can see more of it on my learning log and Instagram. Thank you!

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