Brooklyn Botanic Garden on 6x6
If you like flowers and color science that only film can get, check this out!
I had been putting off the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for years. Always an excuse. Too cold, the trees still bare. Then suddenly too hot. And when the weather finally behaved, it was a weekend, and I pictured the place packed shoulder to shoulder and decided to stay home. You know how it goes. I live in Jersey, it's not super far, but going by car costs more than a Leica, and the commute just takes 1.5h. The thing you most want to do becomes the thing you keep not doing.
Last Saturday I went anyway. Weekend, sure. Crowded, yes. I brought the Hassel and a roll of Ektar and figured I would just deal with the people, wait until I had clean frames, things like that.
The cherry blossoms were long gone. June offers a different game. Roses everywhere, meadow flowers doing their loose, messy thing. I think summer might be the honest season here. If Spring is the postcard, June is the garden actually living.
Without a proper light meter, I followed the Sunny16 rule, which barely fails. If yo udon't know the Sunny16, it's pretty simple: on a sunny day, you use 1/ISO as shutter speed (1/100 if ISO100, 1/400 if ISO400, etc.), and set your aperture to f/16. Done! You are in EV 15 zone, typical for shooting under sunlight.
Since my camera doesn't have a 1/100 shutter speed, I used 1/125 - it's fine. Exposure was not always perfect, but I was able to slightly push/pull some sliders when converting, and voilá. Look at these Ektar 100 colors…
Ektar was a deliberate choice here, I left home with it loaded in the camera. It is the most saturated color negative Kodak makes nowadays (finest grain too). People describe it as slide film with a safety net, all that punch and contrast but with the forgiving latitude of a negative. And i agree!
Bright daylight is exactly when Ektar comes alive. I am happy with the results!
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