Before you read on: If you like photography, you might like my other hobby, Traditional Wet Shaving. Check out my other site: Grown Man Shave where I have been pouring most of my creatively as of late and post my photography. If you don’t know where to start try The Beginner’s Guide to Straight Razors.

Pushing Film was a very confusing topic to me when I first started shooting film. The explanations I found seemed overly technical and didn't really help me to understand what pushing film was all about. Let me try to explain it here in plain english. Let's say you are out shooting film one afternoon and it is getting late in the day and starting to get a little dark. You switch from ASA 100 to ASA 400 film as that is the fastest film you have with you. Before you fire off your first frame you notice that with your biggest aperture (smallest number) the fastest shutter speed for a proper exposure is 1/60 of a second. While this is OK for now in another 20 or 30 minutes as it gets darker you know your fastest shutter speed is going to drop to 1/30 of a second and then 1/15 of a second. With a shutter speed this slow you won't be able to capture a picture without camera shake in it. What do you do? I guess it is time to pack up and go home...

You could also choose to push your film. Pushing film means you will change the ISO setting for your camera's light meter to ASA 800 or 1600 to give you another 1 or two stops of light even though we loaded ASA 400 film. We will 'tell' our camera that the film is really ASA 800 or 1600 even though we have only loaded ASA 400 film. We will also tell the lab that we pushed the film to 800 or 1600 when we drop it off for processing so they know to expose the negatives properly.

Let's say we pushed to 1600. Now our slowest shutter speed will be 1/250 of a second. Said again our exposure settings of ISO 400, f/1.4, 1/60 that we were getting when we first loaded the film now changes to ISO 1600, f/1.4, 1/250. We increased our ISO 2 stops which allows us to increase our shutter speed 2 stops. With a shutter speed of 1/250 of a second we can easily get a few more hours of shooting in. It really isn't much more complicated than that.

A few things that you need to understand about pushing film. When you are pushing film you are pushing the entire roll. The lab will develop the film all at the same shutter speed so you cannot push some frames and not others. I know this is obvious to some people but I get asked this question so I figured it was good to mention it here. You also typically do not want to push a film more than 2 stops. This means you can push 400 to 1600 or 800 to 3200 but don't try to push 400 to 3200. You will seem a noticeable increase in both contrast and grain when you are pushing film. For that reason you'll find pushing film works best in situations with a lot of contrast. Think a singer on a stage in a jazz club with a single light on her or my friend Thorsten standing on a dark street.

Often I am traveling I'll carry two film bodies with me. One I'll have ASA 100 or 400 film and the other ASA 400 pushing to 1600 or 800 pushing to 3200. When it starts to get dark I just switch camera bodies.

I have completed my Kyoto Series with my last post. I hope you have enjoyed all of the photos of Kyoto. I have a few more to share here below and then we will be moving back to photos of Tokyo and some recent trips to the US I have taken.

Here is the first temple shot I took in Kyoto. It was a little temple on a side street on passed on my way to Gion.

Today's configuration: Leica M6 with various Leica Lenses pushing Ilford 400@1600 and TMAX 400@1600.

This scene made me laugh and made me think of my favorite episode of Friends 'The one with the unagi'. It was the episode when Ross was studying 'Ka Ra Te' and his master told him he had achieved 'Unagi'...

Rachel and Phebe were talking to Ross about a self defense class they went to and the scene went something like this:

Ross: 'There is something you should be familiar with. It's what the Japanese call 'Unagi'

Rachel: 'Isn't that a kind of sushi'

Ross: 'No it's a concept'

Phebe: 'Yeah it is, it's fresh water eel'

Ross: 'OK maybe it means that too'

Rachel: 'Oh I would kill for a salmon skin roll right now'

Ross: 'OK get attacked I don't care'

Rachel: 'OK sorry tell us'

Ross: 'Unagi is the state of total awareness. Only by achieve true unagi can you be truly prepared for any danger that may befall you'

Phebe: 'Do you mean like if someone tries to steal your bamboo sleeping mat or kettle of fish?'

Ross: 'Shut up, it takes years to achieve Unagi'

Rachel: 'Phebe we can have unagi in about 20 minutes if we make a reservation'

It is genius. I highly recommend watching it.

Expensive imported beers...

Saki...

I'm always surprised by the random words that are in English in Japan...

..and by the complete lack of spell checking. This was painted on the side of a restaurant. All I have to say is I like my food's and drink's cheep and dericuse!

More saki! I didn't notice at the time I took the photo but the saki barrels were 'coned off'...

Speaking of cones... OK what is going on in this scene? Is the cone being thrown away? Are they coning off their trash? Is the cone a paper weight of sorts to keep the boxes in their place?

How about here? Did the brick destroy the cone? Is the brick being put in place to hold the remains of the cone in place? Did someone smash the cone with the brick in defiance of what was being coned off?