I have three nephews and one niece. The oldest of the four of them graduated from high school this month. Tomorrow is his graduation party.
My stomach has been a right prick for the whole past week. I loop between mildly nauseous to uncomfortable hunger pain to stuffed. Yup. Also, I can’t sleep because my stomach keeps waking me up. I am completely exhausted. Hoo-freakin’-ray.
Is that why I fucked up the laundry today? I have been in charge of the laundry since the day 16 years ago when we moved into the house and for the first time ever I had something go into the wash white and come out pink. I only wash in cold water and I used a color catcher thing and somehow my wife’s white sweater and two of my white socks all came out pink. The fuck?
What else… I am bringing a film camera to the graduation party tomorrow. I just loaded my first ever roll of Kodak Ektacolor 400. The film formerly known as Portra. A pro-level film. Pretty much a given that I’ll do something to screw it all up, right?
Right then, what else… nothing. I got nothing else. I want to go to sleep. G’night, folks.
Happy new camera day, everyone! I bought a Nikon N90 35mm film camera from eBay about a week ago and it was delivered today.
The last two cameras I bought from eBay were broken (a Nikon F-401 with a broken aperture dial and a little Nikon Coolpix S7000 point and shoot that every image comes out blurry) so I was nervous about this one. Would it work? Would it show up in pieces? Who could really say?
Fortunately it seems to be in good shape. It’s practically mint condition, which feels weird to me. It had batteries in it already, which made me a little nervous, and all of the functionality I know how to test seems to be working fine. When I change the aperture or the shutter speed the light meter display changes. When I set it to a slow shutter speed it takes a lot longer for the shutter to close than when I use a fast shutter speed. I can set the ISO and the metering. Most important, with the first of the two lenses I’ve tested, the autofocus works. That sound you hear is my huge sigh of relief.
I won’t truly know if the camera is okay until I shoot a roll of film and get it developed and scanned and see the results. For now though, so far so good. I put a roll of film in it and took a few pics in the back yard. One of these days I’ll take it out in town and finish off the roll. I might go for two test rolls. One with the 70–200mm f4–5.6 lens and one with the 50mm f1.8 lens. I already had an AF Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8 and this new lens is the same name and the same specs but the physical lens itself is a little different. One is probably a minor update of the other. We’ll see how it works.
I have been wanting a camera like this for a while now, but it was the addition of the zoom lens that drew me in and made me pull the trigger. The lens is in really great shape. Like… how is it in this good of a shape? This kit is at least 30 years old. Was it stored in a safe or something?
I don’t know what the back story is. I just know that for now at least I am feeling good about all of this.
I shot two full rolls of film. One 35mm and one 120. I also finished off the last few shots from an old roll of 35mm. I got them all developed and the scans came back the other day and last night I uploaded them all to Flickr and now it’s time for another post here.
Sort of. I am saving the 120 shots for another post. These are just 35mm pics. I’m also thinking of trying to sort of mirror the previous post. This plan probably won’t last for long, but let’s see.
The sunrise view sort of sucked, but I got a little glimpse of it. This is my Nikon FG-20 shooting my first ever roll of Lomography 800. I like the way the sun flares. At least the tiny bit of the sun we could actually see.
I think my plan to follow the first post is already dead… maybe not. I think this is from Salisbury Beach but I’m not sure. This is from my Pentax K1000 shooting Kentmere 400.
(note: on second look, I’m pretty sure this is Hampton Beach when the digital post was still at Salisbury Beach. Let’s not worry about that now though)
This next picture is crap, but speaking of sun flares! Woah!
Here’s one that I took on both film and digital. I can’t tell which is better. Maybe the film?
Another that I can’t tell whether it is better or worse than the digital version. This was with a 50mm lens and the digital was with an 85mm so the crop is different. Is crop the right word? I don’t think so.
The digital version of this is way better. Oh well.
Shooting black and white at the beach seems sort of silly, but I kinda dig it.
That moment when the sun came out… nice.
I thought maybe the light was better at this spot when I was shooting film than it was for digital. Maybe not.
Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. Please don’t explode, m’kay?
For the birds, at Hampton Beach.
More birds. I don’t think I have enough bird-centric film pics to stay on track with the previous digital post. Sorry.
Plum Island airport.
Why do I always stop here on the way out to the lighthouse? I haven’t a clue.
The Merrimack River from Plum Island.
Dig that blue water.
And by this point both 35mm cameras were out of film and I was not going to take the time to reload so this is where this post ends. There will be another post from this day that will have the 120 film shots. That’s going to be grouped with some pics I took in Boston last week. I’ll explain later.
Friday May 8th. Yeah, it’s my birthday. Again. I’m 55 years old. I am divisible by 11.
It’s our only full day in Michigan. I might write up the reason for this trip at some point, but not today. Suffice to say we spent a long day here (and even though it is after 10pm and I am super old, the day is not over). Tomorrow we go home. We will cross the US/Canadian border two more times but one time will be at a new location.
There is a teeny tiny possibility that we might stop very briefly at Niagara Falls. The first time my Dad ever let me shoot a photo with his SLR (a Pentax K1000) was at Niagara Falls. I have a film camera here with me but it’s not Dad’s K1000. Still, it would be fun to take a shot or two of the Canadian falls on film again.
Speaking of SLR’s, I have one coming from eBay at some point next week. I had planned to wait a few weeks before I went out to shoot film again, but now I’ll need to shoot a test roll through the new camera so I can get it developed and prove everything works (oh please let everything work) before I take it out for real. That will hopefully happen next weekend. Fingers crossed.
Until then, I have a long, long drive on the books for tomorrow. An hour or so North of Detroit to a half hour North of Boston. Wish me and my wife and my step son luck on this crazy journey.
That camera I bought on ebay a couple of weeks ago? The Nikon F-401? The camera with the autofocus that was going to make my film shooting life so much easier?
The aperture dial doesn’t work. It just spins, it doesn’t click. It doesn’t actually affect the lens’ aperture at all. Not even a teeny tiny bit. If you try to use the aperture ring instead of the dial as a work around? The camera doesn’t fire.
Failure. Total. The lens is nice though so I probably won’t send it back. Anyone know any place that fixes cameras?
I think it was Father’s Day in 2006. I had a nice little Kodak point and shoot camera and I wanted to use it so I drove into Boston and just walked around. I had an idea to stand at the base of the Hancock building and point the camera straight up. That didn’t quite work the way I had hoped, but when I moved just a little bit I got this:
It might still be my favorite photograph that I have ever taken that doesn’t have Jen or Harry or Bellana or my niece or any of my nephews in it. I like it.
Every time I get a new camera I think, “I’m going to try and recreate that picture” and then it never works out as well. My Nikon D90 gave me a bunch of really good pictures, but nothing close enough to the accidental original. I just couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.
Ever since the film obsession began a few years ago (when my sister found my father’s Pentax K1000 while cleaning out his dresser and asked if anyone wanted it and I suddenly realized that I really, really, really wanted it) I’ve been wanting to go into Boston and see if I could pull it off on film.
Today I went into Boston to see if I could pull it off. I had the K1000, the Lubitell 166, and my digital Nikon Z5. I was messing with the K1000 when I accidentally figured out what I needed to do. I didn’t move to my left, like I thought I did. I moved to my right. All three cameras tried it out. Obviously we have to wait to get the film developed to know how they did, but the digital I can already see.
Inside the Red Head's Head 