I got a working half-frame camera in November so the bad news for you, dear reader, is that I can now shoot twice as many photos on a roll and will be taking even more photos than I have been. I got an Olympus Pen FT, and it’s been really nice to shoot with in general.

By the way, other than being able to take twice as many photos, the draw of the half-frame camera for me is that, since each image is smaller on the roll of film, the grain is much more pronounced in each image. In fact, it’s twice as large as it would appear in a normal full-frame 35mm image.

I love the gritty look of these images that comes as a result of this larger grain, and I love how the process of reflected light being recorded onto a film strip can distort reality. It’s more a process of mark-making than of capturing real objects and scenes. Film photography in general has this appeal for me, and black-and-white film is already great at abstracting reality. But the smaller images with larger grain that the half-frame camera produces add yet another layer of distortion between the real thing and how it’s expressed in the final image. These images feel even more dreamlike to me, they have the quality of a moment half-remembered. And rather than simply being a still moment in time, these images make it look as though the world itself held still and posed.