After lots of seaside pinhole action this week I returned inland, to Ely. I still had three frames of my Fomapan film to use up so I started off outdoors. Fomapan suffers from very bad reciprocity failure, which means what would be an exposure of a few seconds with a digital camera can end up being several hours when using a pinhole camera so it wasn’t a good choice for shooting inside a dark Cathedral.
Looking up at the west front of Ely Cathedral
By the time I headed into the Cathedral I’d swapped over to Kodak TMAX400, which reacts much better to longer exposures – my longest one was a more manageable six minutes. Still a lot of hanging around, but I just used the time to admire the architecture and plan my next shot.
I started off in the nave, capturing some wide views, looking towards the altar and straight up. Setting up this sort of shot takes time without a viewfinder for guidance, but it was worth the effort.
Working my way around the building, I found other opportunities all around me, although some spots proved to be just too dark.
Click on the images to see them larger
Towards the end of my visit I loitered a while in the south aisle, setting up another of my ghostly self portraits. I’m still discovering the best way to shoot these, and on this occasion it looks like I’m a headless ghost!
Candlelight in St Catherine’s Chapel