Capturing Tiny Worlds with the Pentax 17 - Macro Film Photography

Welcome back to Masha - a regular in our Analogue Adventures series. This week she has been using her Pentax 17 film camera to experiment with analogue macro photography. Let's find out how she got on!

Having only ever used my Olympus Trip to shoot film, being able to choose from so many more focus zones got me very excited and exceedingly trigger happy. Having the option of macro shots in what feels like a point-and-shoot camera (using this term very lovingly here – the Pentax 17 is so portable and I feel like it’s so much easier to take it around with me as it fits into most of my bags super comfortably!) inspired me to challenge myself with shooting details I’d normally overlook when out with my trusty Olympus.

As someone who often gravitates towards scenery and vast landscapes, as I am sure you have noticed if you read my previous blogs, learning to look closer at my surroundings felt somewhat different to trying to position a vaster shot. In the past, leaf textures, water droplets, the way light falls across flowers to create highlights and shadows, the contrast between the fresh spring foliage and leaves that have weathered several winters are all details that I haven’t often paid attention to.

With my Olympus, many of those smaller and finer details felt impossible to capture, but with the Pentax 17 I feel as if I have unlocked a vastly different shooting perspective.

“What could there be around you for you to be able to shoot a whole roll of film?” you might ask. Growing up as a Ukrainian child, I was very fortunate (although little me didn’t see it that way) to spend much my childhood in the very rural Ukrainian countryside surrounded by all possible flowers and plants that you can imagine.

So when I decided to experiment with macro shots through the eye of Pentax 17, flowers and plants felt like the most natural subjects to start with. Plus we were in late spring which made flower accessibility much easier, since everything is in bloom 💐

What will the film choice be for this occasion, madame?

I approached film decision as a lucky dip – I knew that I wanted colour, and I knew that I wanted 400 ISO, but I left the rest to luck, which led me to produce Cinestill 400D from my film treasure chest (read: small tin box). I haven’t used this one before, which meant that I got to tick off another film off of my bucket list – if you don’t have a bucket list of all the films you want to try, what are you even doing…

This film is often described as having a soft colour palette, but as a practical and visual learner, unless I shoot a film and see my own results, I often can’t picture what the description is actually telling me (I know example photos exist, but can we really be certain that they haven’t been edited?!)

Well, I am very happy to confirm that I do in fact now know why it is referred to as such. It has translated the purples and pinks of the springtime flowers visible to the naked eye perfectly, bringing out the creaminess and haziness of the pastels and making some of the shots look as if they were taken in a dream or a magical princess fairytale (these are most definitely the correct technical terms).

The fine(-r) grain of this film also worked super well with the half-frame shots, as I’ve noticed with some previous rolls that sometimes grain took away from the focus of the shot by being too ‘in your face’, but I am happy to report that it was not the case on this occasion.

This was also my first experience with subtle halation in some of the shots (for my non-film friends reading this: it’s the red/orange halos around brightest areas of the photo), it was especially prominent in the photo I took of the peonies I spotted weighed down by the earlier rain, with droplets catching the light and tracing the edges of the petals, creating this soft glowing outline that separates them from the green foliage.

I honestly think that this film is creeping into my top 5 favourite film stocks ever, but I will hold off on that judgement until I try it in other scenarios – maybe some scenery or even a human subject or two? Paul, tell the people, how’s the restock looking for this? Are we ever going to have it back? [Ed: yes! On its way...]

Check once to not shoot twice

Nothing humbles you (read: me) faster than spending several minutes on your knees in the shared front garden (in front of several sets of windows mind), attempting to take a macro shot of some wild daisies, getting back to the flat and realising that you didn’t actually select the necessary shooting mode, and instead of Bokeh, you confidently shot everything in Program.

In case you are wondering, I DID have to take a few deep breaths before braving the outside yet again. The poor wasted frames filled with blurry daisies have truly emphasised to me the need to slow down and pay attention to my gear when shooting, especially when you are in a very peculiar position for everyone to see and most definitely judge fairly heavily.

When it comes to wasted frames, I guess this is a quirk of film photography that you just have to accept and embrace, but luckily considering Pentax shoots half-frame, the wasted shots do not sting as much when you look at them as half priced!

Similarly, really giving yourself enough time to measure the distance between the camera and the subject can genuinely help you avoid the lost or out-of-focus shots, which is something I ended up with on more than one occasion (but shhh, it’ll be our secret).

There was much potential here, but not only did the wind move my hands slightly away from the subject, it also moved the leaves, which led to a subpar focus and a disappointing shot – don’t be like me, re-measure the distance

Guesstimating is not something that should be done when taking macro shots with Pentax 17 and if it means spending a little more time to repeatedly re-stretch the MVT (most valuable tool), also known as the Pentax’s wrist strap (that is exactly 25cm when stretched!), then arguably that is time well spent.

I frequently caught myself measuring the same shot several times, although I am somewhat undecided whether that came from perfectionism, anxiety around wasting yet another frame or the late-spring wind constantly rearranging the prior positioning of my chosen flowers or leaves.

Occasionally I did step back further than 25cm and let the wrist strap have a break

If you assumed this roll would escape wider shots from a normal human distance, you don’t know me well enough. Although instead of looking for perspective, breathtaking mountain views or drastically vast landscapes, I focused more on textures, colours and contrast – ending up with some of my favourite photos this spring.

One of them is an accidental shot of some tulips growing by the side of the wall we walk past quite often, but something about the multitude of contrasts caught my eye and my hands just itched to take a phot…or two…or three. There is just something about the roughness of the cement wall, the sleek green tulip leaves and the petals bursting with vivid colours that makes it difficult to look away from the photo.

One thing that I can say I am starting to truly enjoy is that this camera truly pushes you to lean into vertical shots, especially since the flora works really well with vertical positioning, since flowers, stems and even trees are all naturally more vertical (duh Masha…). When I use my Olympus, I often find myself automatically thinking in horizontal frame as if encouraged by the camera itself and since Pentax is half-frame, my automatic thinking switches, leading to more vertical rather than horizontal shots thanks to the camera’s portrait orientation.

In my previous blog, I mentioned that diptychs is something that I really wanted to try, and whilst I do blame my gold-fish memory for not remembering said aim as consistently as I would have liked, I am happy to report that did in fact happen, and for my first ever diptych, I am pretty chuffed! Although partially this success is somewhat due to my desire to have a macro shot of the lilac flowers, so we could argue that this diptych is more accidental than not.

I really enjoy the distinctiveness between the characters of the photos, even though they both stem from the same time and place, with the first being a more observational view of what you would see if you were to simply walk past, whilst the second shifts your focus to the delicate flowers. You can also see some more of the halation coming through in both images, as they were in fact shot against the sun (oopsie).

These trees have been a constant for me when growing up in Ukraine, as they seemed to be on every corner back home, so every spring I set myself on the quest of finding all the trees around Bristol during their blossom season. If someone reading this has a secret lilac orchard they’d like to invite me to next year, please most definitely reach out!!

It also wouldn’t be me if I didn’t take at least one animal photo on this roll, and this actually turned out to be such a surprising one (this is where my amazement comes back of how fine the grain of this film is) - you can genuinely pick out individual strands of its fur! This film did such a fantastic job at translating the warmth of the day through the sunlight and the shadows, whilst still retaining enough detail in the background for us to be able to distinguish individual leaves. I also love the different contrasting textures that balance the photo out so well, the softness of our (unpaid) model, the sharpness of its teeth but also the grittiness of the mulch that is clearly fitting to its taste!

72 +2 unexpected additional exposures later

For someone who hasn’t really shot anything from less than a meter away, dedicating a a full roll (okay…maybe closer to two-thirds of the roll) to macro photos was actually slightly intimidating at first, especially with a camera that is still fairly new to me (is there a time limit for when you can’t call it ‘new to me’ anymore?).

Not every frame worked, but that was very much expected since selecting the correct shooting mode was not always at the forefront of my mind and is yet to become second nature. I also never expect to end up with 72 photos that would all be worth sharing, so I don’t see that as a negative. It’s more about unpicking what went wrong and how I can approach it better next time, rather than wallowing in self-pity that some frames were wasted 😄

If you have a Pentax 17 (or any other camera capable of this) and macro photography is something that you are considering, I hope you take this as a sign to bite the metaphorical bullet! Arm yourself with some film and just go for a walk, and if committing to 72 shots is a little too much, a roll with 24-exposures could be an option for a mere 48 frames. There is so much around us that deserves to be captured up close and personal.

Masha's Top Tips for Analogue Macro Photography with the Pentax 17

1. Check not only your focus zone but also triple check that you selected the correct shooting mode.
2. Measure, re-measure and then probably measure again just to be safe. The wrist strap comes with the camera for a reason!
3. Be patient, let the wind gusts pass and allow your chosen subject to settle before taking a shot – unless you are as impatient as I am, in which case prepare yourself for a few blurry shots 😅

Thank you Masha! What a fantastic experience to read through and I LOVE your tulip photos 😍 Reader - do you have any macro film tips to share below?