Video: Thomas Heaton’s frustrating photoshoot teaches the value of persistence

Photographer Thomas Heaton has been shooting more frequently with film. While on a road trip to Scotland, Heaton decided to use his Fujifilm GX617 panoramic film camera. It's no secret that shooting with film is different than using a digital camera. In many ways, shooting with film is significantly more challenging. Heaton seems to enjoy the challenge most of the time, but every so often, it can push nearly any photographer to the breaking point.

Have you ever been capturing images at a location, having a grand time, when you suddenly realized that an important camera setting was incorrect? I certainly have. I can't tell you the number of items over the years when I've been shooting, looked down and realized, 'Oh, crap, my ISO was too high.' The consequence is slightly worse image quality, but when shooting in aperture priority, the images still come out looking fine. I've also shot with the wrong image quality setting, RAW shooting somehow disabled, and the white balance all wrong. In some cases, like with ISO or white balance, it's not the end of the world. In other cases, such as shooting JPEG only, it's very frustrating.

Well, Heaton recently ran into one of those 'very frustrating' moments when he realized that his light meter had somehow been changed from ISO 100 to ISO 16, feeding him exposure information that was incorrect by four stops. Worse yet, Heaton had no way of knowing how long he had been shooting with the wrong exposure information, and since he was shooting film, he couldn't just check the back of his camera to find out. It was just but one issue of many for Heaton, though. Good light disappeared moments before he was ready to shoot. The weather turned for the worse. He just found it very difficult to relax and enjoy the day.

So, what happened? Was he able to salvage the day and come home with some great images despite the mix-up?

The video above is just the latest from Heaton's road trip to Scotland. He has five other videos so far, featuring stunning vistas and beautiful photography using a Fujifilm GFX 50R medium format mirrorless camera, a Hasselblad 501cm film camera and the Fujifilm GX617 pano camera seen above. To view all the videos, check out the dedicated road trip playlist.

To see other videos from Thomas Heaton, visit his YouTube channel. To view his photography, check out his website. 

(Via Thomas Heaton)