Gilad,
I spent five months in India a couple years ago, and did a great deal of photography (though with a point and shoot camera, which I regret; wish I'd had my F100 along, in spite of the weight and breakage risk). Perhaps some of the residents and expats that visit this forum can give recommendations on how to avoid the problems I encountered, but this will give you a "what to watch out for" view:
You can find film very easily, and relatively cheaply, virtually anywhere - including little hole-in-the-wall shops in any city. If you want something other than run-of-the-mill Kodak or Fuji consumer film, however, you should be prepared to take it with you, since outside major urban centers like Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore you'll be hard-put to find a real photographer's shop. And be aware that unless you buy from a pro shop (which are hard or impossible to find outside said major cities), the film you are likely to find will probably have been stored in the open in extreme heat and humidity for anything from weeks to months, and will suffer accordingly.
I never did manage to come up with a solution to film storage and protection that could cope with the climate - I was backpacking for the most part, so such luxuries as refrigeration, coolers, and so forth were way outside my league. Perhaps a small cooler would work, if you could find a steady supply of ice, or have access to a refrigerator and take a re-freezeable ice pack or two along with you (I doubt you'll find either a cooler or ice packs in India without some serious searching and probably some knowledgeable local help). My photos came out poorly for the most part, largely due to the death toll the climate imposed on my film. Airport X-rays are far less of a problem than the simple heat, in my opinion.
Development, like film, is easy to come by virtually anywhere, and very cheap by US or European standards. However, like film, quality is highly variable - if you are picky about your photos (and if you hang out on photo.net, I presume you are), do your very best to find a pro-quality lab. You'll have to stick close to major cities, particularly those like Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi with a relatively large upper middle class who can afford hobbies like serious photography, but you'll be much better off accepting those constraints than trusting your precious photos to a typical local lab. Take the typical Fox or Ritz Photo in the US and add extremely low operating margins, difficulty and expense in obtaining chemicals, extraordinary problems in maintaining an optimal developing environment in terms of temperature and humidity, and equipment that ranges from top-of-the-line to archaic, and you can see the kind of challenges you might confront. I was so disappointed with the quality of what I got back that I filed away virtually all my shots from India in the deepest corner of my closet for almost two years - until on a whim I pulled them out and tried scanning them into my computer direct from the negatives, using an HP PhotoSmart scanner. I discovered that the negatives were marvelous, but the quality of the printing was atrocious. Caveat emptor.
You'll minimize this issue if you stick to slide film, but I found it harder to find (in terms of film availability; didn't try developing, largely for that reason) than print film. Finding a good pro shop wherever you'll be located would help solve both issues.
As for actual material to photograph, you'll find the country more than makes up for the technical challenges it presents in the sheer awesome power of its imagery. My favorites: monsoon rainclouds and flooding in Calcutta and the rest of Bengal (late June-September); any of the myriad festivals that seem to take place in any given town every few weeks; landscapes in the Himalayan foothills in Himachal Pradesh and northern West Bengal (didn't make it to Ladakh, which is supposedly even more dramatic); mangrove forests, rice paddies, and local villages in Orissa; temples virtually anywhere, but particularly around Bhubaneswar, Puri, Varanasi, and Calcutta; street life in any of the major cities; Dhurga and Kali Pujas in Calcutta, with their pandals (temporary shrines and goddess statues) and festivities; the Ganges at Varanasi, particularly at sunset from a boat; Pushkar (though I wasn't there for its famous Camel Fair); and pretty much all of Rajasthan, with its wealth of forts, temples, deserts, mountains, and colorful people.
I envy you your year there - I absolutely fell in love with the people, the country, the scenery, the culture, the spirituality... I'd go back in a minute, though this time preferably *not* at the height of the monsoon! If I can offer any general travel tips or share my perspective on what I saw, feel free to e-mail me - I can't give you the kind of insider's perspective that others here can, but I can certainly share what I learned as a long-term visitor trying to make my way in a very different environment!
Cheers,
David
, Jul 06, 2000; 08:20 p.m.
