Did I take advantage of the perfect Spring weather to go out and take a shit load of photos today? No. No I did not. I suck. To make up for it, here’s another bunch of pics taken with my father’s Pentax K1000.
Note the matching t-shirts.
Not a horse’s ass, but…
If you had asked me two days ago whether or not I was planning on bringing a film camera on our next Florida vacation in June I think I would have said no.
Then yesterday I got a bunch of film developed and now I think the answer will probably be yes. I am so easily manipulated.
It’s weird but I actually have two packages that have been shipped out by me over the last couple of days. One is a passport renewal form that went out via Fed Ex last night and the other is seven rolls of 35mm film* that I sent out via USPS on Saturday. Which will arrive at its destination first? The race is on! In this post-pandemic era of online shopping it’s common to be following packages that are on their way to you, but less common to have to follow packages that are on their way from you. Maybe not. I don’t know. I have to write about something.
Apparently you can spend six months in Scotland without a visa. Who knew? Ireland only lets you stay for three months. England and Wales are also six months, so is that a UK thing in general? What about Australia? I’ve recently watched two television shows that took place in Australia so I feel like I practically live there already. Duck Duck Go (fuck you, Google) says you need to obtain an Australian visa before you arrive. Well that’s no fun. Kevin Garvey, Jr and Nora Durst must have already had a visa when they left Miracle, TX on The Leftovers. Kevin Garvey, Sr… well who knows what that whack job was doing. He sure as hell didn’t.
The Bruins season ended last night on another painful loss. Some teams still have a game left to play, but my team is done. Mercifully. The best they can finish is tied with Philly for last place in the Eastern Conference. The worst they can do is finish in last all by their lonesome. Unfortunately for the draft lottery, there are 4-5 teams out west that will finish with worse records. Not that we have a General Manager who knows how to draft for shit though. In other Boston sports news, the Red Sox actually won a game last night after getting humiliated on Monday night. Fun.
I’m in the office today and tomorrow so the pickin’s for photo a day will be slim. Not that it matters. They are all just pictures of cats anyway. This one for today made use of the iPhone’s low light feature. It works well.
*35mm film refers to the size of the negative… I think. 120 film does not refer to the size of the negative. I read somewhere that it refers to an old Kodak catalog product code. Mentioning 35mm and 120 film in the same sentence makes my ass itch. It’s like doing your physics homework and mixing up your units of measure. It’s like referring to velocity (measured in meters/seconds) and acceleration (measured in meters/seconds squared) as if they were the same thing. I believe the product code for 35mm is actually 135 (not too confusing there, Kodak) but I don’t know what the negative size for 120 film is. I can’t bring myself to call 35mm 135 so I guess I will continue to mix units and have an itchy ass. I could say medium format instead of 120 but that just feels like taking it all a step too far. I don’t know.
One day in Manhattan. Maybe better described as most of one day in Manhattan.
That’s the plan. Drive to someplace in Connecticut that has rail access to NYC. Stay overnight. Take a train into the city tomorrow morning, early. Stay for most of the day. Sometime in the late afternoon or early evening, take a train back to where we started and then drive home.
That leaves two questions. First, what do we do while we’re there. Second, which cameras do I bring?
To answer the first question, we’ll probably just go where the xmas decorations take us. This trip is an attempt at forcing some holiday spirit onto our grinchy, scroogy selves. To answer the second question… I am not sold on anything yet except that I will not be bringing my new medium format camera. I need to run a roll through it to make sure it works before I bring it anywhere of consequence. I just have to get off my ass and do it. So it’s down to the digital Nikon Z5, and the 35mm Pentax K1000, and Nikon FG-20. Both of the film cameras have partially shot rolls. The K1000 is down to the last handful of shits on a roll of Kentmere 400, which is Black and White, and the FG-20 has most of a roll of Kodak ColorPlus 200.
I think I want to bring the K1000 (my father’s camera) and a couple of rolls of color film. I have a handful of ColorPlus that I could bring. I would only bring one or two. I don’t want to spend all of my time fudging with film. At least… assuming I bring the digital camera too. My thought though… do I want to even bring the digital camera? I mean, I do. I want to bring it literally everywhere I go. On this occasion though? There’s a little part of me that is considering going film-only this time.
I don’t know… I am thinking about it.
All right, red head. It’s time to get off your ass and shoot some film. Enough procrastinating. Enough saying you’re going to do stuff and then don’t. Damn it!
I have four rolls of film ready to develop. Most of it is from our Disney trip back in May/June. There are a couple of shots that are actually from Fathers Day and they are likely the last pictures I will ever have of my dad. It’s time to get the friggin’ things developed.
But…
I have a roll in my Nikon that is nearly finished. I should shoot the rest of that first and then get five rolls developed, right? I also have a roll in my Pentax. I should shoot through that and then get all six developed, right? Right?
Damn it! I am procrastinating around my procrastination! Get off your faux-photographer ass, red head!
Sunrise at the ocean tomorrow is 6:47am and the forecast calls for mostly clear skies. That does it. I’m going pitcher shootin’ tomorrow. Go to the ocean, bang out the roll in the Nikon, take some digitals, come down the coast to the usual places like the Plum Island light house and bang through the roll in the Pentax along with some more digitals. Then if I still have film left, hit a few places in my town and work through the rest of it.
I am working in the office on Monday so I won’t be able to get to the post office. Tuesday I am working at home though, so by Tuesday morning we’ll have an order placed at some photo lab and I’ll drop everything off for shipping before work.
I have spoken. Make it so. This is the way.
In closing, here’s a shot of the Spicket Falls Damn in Methuen that I shot on Kentmere 100 film with my Nikon FG-20. Just because film is cool in a nerdy retro faux artistic bullshit way.
I wrote something the other day about the new Pentax 17. The first new Pentax film camera developed since the 1840’s (approximately). I love the idea of it but it’s half frame and zone focusing and more expensive than I was hoping (though just about as expensive as I figured it would be). Also, the camera I took from my father when we cleaned out the house is a Pentax so that seemed fitting somehow.
I won’t be buying one. At least not for a while. I want either an SLR or a point and shoot. They say they are working on both of those, but I’ll just have to wait and see.
Turns out there is another new film camera on the way. It’s a point and shoot with autofocus and it’s not half frame. That sounds awesome! It’s called the Rollei 35AF though I guess it isn’t made by Rollei? Whoever makes it is just licensing the name? I guess. Also it’s going to cost 200-300 more than than Pentax 17 so… yikes. Again, way more than I want to spend, but probably just what I would have expected to spend. This is more like what I would like to invest in, though I would still much rather get a new SLR that would have little side benefits like repairability and warrantees and fun stuff like that.
Still, it’s intriguing. We’ll see.
I used to do a New Years Day post where I took one photo from each month of the previous year and reshared them in one big post. I did that a bunch of times, but I can’t remember if I did one for 2022 in 2023. Did I drop the ball last year? I know I’ve been dropping it this year. I mean, today is January 8th and I haven’t done one yet.
Thinking about a post like that (even though I haven’t done it yet and am not sure if I will or not) has me thinking about things I can do for photography projects in 2024. The Photo a Day Challenge is alive and well, though very not-interesting at all. What about film? I haven’t taken a photograph on film since the weather started getting cold. What can I do as a project that is entirely film based?
Maybe instead of a photo a day on film (which I was thinking about doing this year but eventually decided against) I could do a film photo a month? I could plan one photo walk sort of thing for each month in 2024 and take a few film photos each time. Then when they are all developed and scanned I can lump the 12 monthly photos into one post here. Does that sound like something I could do? It does, if you don’t worry about what the monthly photo walk would be. Logistically it would be easy. Creatively… maybe not.
We’ll see. It’s already over a week into January so we’re behind the 8-ball to start with. We are planning a visit to Vermont in early February. I could use that for that month. That doesn’t help me with January though. Boston is right down the road… maybe I could talk my wife into going for a walk in the city with me? That could be fun and creatively beneficial.
I don’t know if I want to charge myself with this. We’ll see. We’ll also see if I do a 2023 retrospective one-pic-per month thing. I might do that tonight. Again, we’ll see.
Inside the Red Head's Head 