Contra dancing is really fun. If you haven’t done it, I highly recommend it. We have a group down here dedicated to traditional music and dance, and this was probably the second or third event since the Wuhan Red Death (aka COVID-19) shut everything down. I really missed these.
Contra dancing is very similar to line and square dancing. If you’ve done either of these, you should pick it up really quickly.
As with most indoor photos, it’s all about balancing the light that is there with the light you make. I had a shoe-mounted flash and had to be constantly mindful of my aperture and flash power. The upside is the flash works with the camera, and you get features such as through-the-lens (TTL) metering. The downside is the angle is fixed at 90 degrees, firing directly in front of you. If you’re not careful, you will blow out your subject and leave the background dark.
Many of these are adjusted in post to spread the light level across the picture. The editing give the illusion of more fill light than was in the original.
I had some leftover exposures on the roll, so I decided to take some night time pictures on my drive back home. A lot of them, while interesting, are a bit blurry. I’ve only done a little bit of nighttime stuff, so with time and practice, they should get better.
I do like the last one the best.
Development Details
- Film: Ilford HP5+ (400 ISO)
- Camera ISO setting: 400
- Developer: Kodak XTol
- Development Time: 8.5 Minutes
- Development Agitation: Ilford Style (4x inversions every minute)