These photos are from the Head of the Charles race last year. These photos are shot with a Holga 120S and Ilford SFX 200 film.

The Holga is a cheap $25 plastic camera from China that allows you to use medium format (120) film. It's super fun, it has weird light leaks and you can accidently make double exposures if you don't pay attention.  You don't have much control either, a set shutter speed and 1 or 2 apertures. It's perfect for shooting 100 or 200 ISO film on a sunny day.

I threw in the roll of Ilford SFX 200 in my medium format plastic $25 Holga and these are the results. I didn't realize how much of an IR effect I'd get. I did hold a 25A red filter in front of the plastic lens, otherwise the shots would probably have looked like typical b/w film. However, I failed in compensating about 2 stops of light loss for that red filter. The negatives are very thin. Don't forget to compensate!

A few weeks later I did read that SFX is indeed sensitive to near Infrared wavelengths, although not as sensitive to true IR as Kodak HIE or the Maco/Rollei 820 stuff.

Originally I was shooting with my Fuji S3 Pro DSLR and 70-210mm telephoto lens. I was hoping to get the typical "action" shots of the rowers. Well, after 2 photos, my batteries died! That was because I forgot to charge them at home. Oops.

I put the Fuji away and pulled out my Nikon Coolpix modified to shoot only IR (you can see those photos here), and my Holga and shot with those the rest of the day.

Sometimes you have to roll with what you can't control. I always bring a couple cameras or more just in case something goes wrong. And sometimes, when things go wrong, you improvise and just take other photos which may be just as interesting.