With my Fuji GS645S in hand, I resumed monochrome film testing. Lomography makes several monochrome films, and I chose Lady Gray to try out.
The following is a conversation I had with another film photographer:
Me: Lady Gray is too gray for me.
Her: …It’s… right there in the name!
She’s right! But I hadn’t expected it to be so mid-tone-y. I intentionally sought mixed lighting conditions (where Plus-X would have succeeded) to see its characteristics. While each roll had some high contrast images, two out of three rolls were dominated by unexpectedly under-exposed-looking images. My photos of reflections (admittedly challenging, but I’ve had great success with this subject) were mostly flat and dim. The black areas showed more spots than usual. I’m happy to own exposure errors (surely the NE face of SFMoMA was just mis-metered to be so gray?), but the same camera and meter (and caffeinated photographer) had very different results with other films. It seems to have a narrower exposure range for success. So I believe this film wants more light generally than I was giving it.
I’ll share a sample of the three rolls here, including those with the best contrast AND a three or so that lack bright whites and dark blacks.
My conclusion: it’s possible to get great results from this film, yet it is also easy to produce low-contrast images. If you choose it, lean toward more light (at least a stop up?) for shade and reflection than you would give comparable films.