Pennsylvania Avenue Subway, Reading Railroad, Philadelphia, 2004.
Captured with a Fuji GX680 camera, 80mm lens, T-Max 100 film. Some tilt was applied to control focus. It was very dark in there, and focusing required the use of a flashlight.
The Pennsylvania Avenue Subway was built to provide a sub-grade freight connection between the Reading Railroad's main line and its "City Branch". It served the Baldwin Locomotive Works' Callowhill plant and the Philadelphia Inquirer's printing plant, among other Center City industries. Abandoned in the 1980's.
The GX680 was a fun but very unusual camera that couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be. It's a truly gigantic beast of a medium format SLR camera providing (limited) view camera movements. It shot 120-format roll film with a 6x8cm frame (so a 3:4 aspect ratio), with a built-in autowinder. It's sort of what you'd get if you merged a Nikon F4, a Hasselblad, and a Crown Graphic. Definitely not a point & shoot camera.
I went all digital about a year after this photo.
I love that so many creative people are going back to film today and keeping a lot of that technique from being lost (not to mention maintaining film and developer industries), but I doubt I'll join them. I don't buy the argument that film photography is somehow more "pure" (whatever that means), or that digital photography is "cheating" because it doesn't require certain skills. I'm glad I have film experience, but also glad to leave it behind.
@mattblaze I’m having a lot of fun with film, but it sure takes a lot of time.
which I have a lot of these days.
@peterhoneyman @mattblaze If you develop your own film watch out for that bit of tape that holds the film to the spool. If you pull it off quickly it can generate static charges that cause sparks, the light from which can fog the film. It can help during dry weather to have a humidifier in the darkroom to help avoid this kind of static discharge.
@peterhoneyman @mattblaze I went digital when I realized that the cost of film and processing for (I think it was) three years would pay for a digital body that fit my existing lenses. No brainer.
@oclsc @mattblaze i went digital twenty years ago but stuck with film, too