This past weekend, I spent most of my free time completely butchering a roll of Portra 800.
It wasn’t necessarily meant to be a hack job, but also… it kinda was. I regularly rip down fresh 120 film to shoot and reload in my 110 cameras.
Pretty standard stuff so far.
Well, how cool would it be if I first shot the roll of 120 in my Yashica A before splitting it and reloading it in my Pentax Auto110? I don’t know about you, but that sounds like pure fun to me!
The end result should produce several double exposed, 6×6 images with smaller overlapping images inside. That is, if everything went as planned.
Buuuuuuuut, it didn’t.
Screw up number one: I built a new (faulty) film splitter
I’ve ripped down a lot of film to reload for my 110 cameras. And the blades were getting a bit dull on my old cutter, so I thought, “Hey! I’ll just build myself a new one”. I’m pretty crafty, so, off to the hardware store I went. After about an hour, for 20 bucks, I had a new home-made 120 to 110 film splitter.
However, this new contraption had a fatal design flaw- the blades, while perfectly spaced to rip a roll of 120 down into 4 sections of 110 film, had a little wobble and would sway slightly while in use creating uneven cuts.
The variation in thickness of the film made it super difficult both when reloading it in my 110 cartridges and getting it wound on to the reels of my develop tank when processing.
Screw up number two: I forgot to reduce the exposure
When you shoot multiple exposures, the best practice is to reduce each exposure by 1 stop per additional layer. In this case, I should have chosen some 100 or 200 speed film, because the Auto110 can only rate the ISO up to 400. If I’m shooting Portra 800, I should have been shooting it at 1600 both in the Yashica and the Pentax to best blend the exposures.
Luckily, Portra can be force-fed a bunch of extra light and still be okay. So, I shot the roll at ISO 400 each time, and hoped for the best.
Other notes – My workflow
After ripping down the roll in the dark, I placed each strip into black light-tight film canisters labelled 1-4. From there, I would load one strip at a time into my old split 110 cartridges, and shoot it through my Pentax. When the roll was finished in the Pentax, I would take the strip back out and store it in the canister again.
Once everything was exposed, I loaded the strips in my Yankee tank to develop.
The takeaways
All in all, I think the process and workflow would have produced some excellent results had the film splitter created equal cuts and I planned the ISO better. But like any experiment, you adapt and improve. I’m pretty sure I’ll nail it next time.