Tag: camera

FG-20: It Seems to Work

I put film in the new/ebay camera. It was a little difficult getting it to advance. It moved okay when the door was open, but not at all when it was closed. I think I need to roll it back a little to tighten it. It seems that way at least.

I also have to remember to half-push the shutter to get the light meter to work. That has gone wrong once as my attempt to half push accidently turned into a full push. Woops. So far it seems to be advancing the film correctly. Hopefully that continues for… forever, I guess.

Now I just have to shoot the whole roll and get it developed so that I can know the whole thing actually really works instead of just feels like it works. I also need to know if there’s anything fatal with the lens. It seems okay, but focusing feels a little difficult.

It’s all very interesting.

Tuesday Stuff

Happy Amazon Prime Day. I don’t really know what that means, but my beloved wife spent her pre-work morning shopping for bargains. I don’t know if she got any, but we have a new dorm room to partially populate at the end of next month so fingers crossed for good stuff.

Today is my work anniversary. 18 years ago today I started a new job. Eighteen (18) years… That’s the longest I’ve ever stuck with anything in my whole life. It’s crazy. Crazy, I tells ya.

My father is moving to a new room within the assisted living facility he’s currently living in. The moving day is tomorrow. I haven’t seen his new room, but I’ve seen one that is similar. It’s bigger than his current room and it has an actual kitchen. I took the day off to help out. I’m not sure how it’s going to go yet. We’ll see. I’m optimistic that this is going to be a good thing. I am not sure if my father agrees or not. Again, we’ll see.

Bellana is coming home on Friday. Repeat: Bellana is coming home on Friday. We’re going to have both kids in the house at the same time and it’s everything. Literally everything!

My Ebay camera purchase that I kinda wanted to back out of but didn’t is supposed to be delivered today. Here’s hoping the lens that the seller chucked in for free actually works. I am not sure it will. Unfortunately, Amazon Prime Day doesn’t have any deals on Nikon lenses from the 80’s so there’s no help coming from there.

18 years. I’ve actually stuck with something for 18 years. Who woulda thunk it. I wonder how many other folks from my new hire group are still around. Our careers are old enough to vote. So weird.

Silent on the CVS Front

It’s been two weeks and two days since I dropped off my first roll of film at CVS in Methuen. No word from them yet. It’s long enough that my second roll of film is now within the 7-10 day window. It’s been eight days.

Pretty much guaranteed that I won’t be using CVS again. I’m going to have to start trying online labs. There is one in Maine and one in Portsmouth, NH. They both look promising and the shipping time will be nice and short. I have one roll of film sitting in my desk ready to go. I’ll hold on to it until I have another roll or two to develop and I’ll send them all off together. The Ebay camera is supposed to be here by the weekend, so I’m probably going to want to shoot a roll on that to test it out. The seller was iffy on the lens he/she is sending along with the camera body. If it’s bad, developing a roll of film will show that, and then I can wait for Santa to get a lens upgrade.

I need a less dumb hobby, don’t you think?

Unrelated note: There is a fly in here with me. It has the whole friggin’ cellar to bother but it’s hanging around near me and it’s driving me crazy. I turned off all of my desk lamps in the hopes it will go find other lights to circle, but it’s still hanging around me. Maybe it is drawn to the window? Maybe my monitor is brighter than each individual ceiling light? That’s doubful.

Either way, as soon as that sucker lands somewhere within reach, the little notebook sitting on my desk to my right and I are going to terminate it with extreme prejudice. Splat, bitch.

ADDENDUM: The fly has ended. The world is safe once again.

Ebay

I put a bid on an ebay auction for an old Nikon film camera. I don’t want to bring Dad’s camera on vacation in January because I would be afraid of dropping it or having it stolen or accidentally sit on it or Donald Duck might savagely attack me and smash it over my idiotic head.

You know, something like that.

So I put in a bid on a camera that lots of people on YouTube and Reddit said was both good and similar to Dad’s camera. The auction ended last night. By the time I got up yesterday morning I was feeling quite a bit of buyer’s remorse. Even though I hadn’t even won yet. Turns out I actually did win it. I didn’t welch on the bid, even though I was pretty close to cancelling my account without paying. I couldn’t be that big of a prick so I paid up.

I’m sure it’s going to be fine and I am sure it’s going to survive whatever Donald Duck may throw at it, but somehow buyer’s remorse is more obnoxious when ebay is involved.

For now though, let’s just leave this with a little Lock Monsters Hockey. It used to be alive.

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Tomorrow

What do I want to do tomorrow? Besides the 0.75% of a band practice. I don’t know.

Visit my mother? I could use a little of that. I saw dad today but it’s been a week since I’ve seen mom.

Work on the 50 songs in 90 days thing? Maybe. Probably not.

Get up at sunrise and mess around with cameras again? That would be fun, but where would I go? I’ve hit my favorite spots in town. Maybe downtown Lowell? Maybe the river walk in Lowell? Maybe the Shawsheen river in Tewksbury? I know a couple of good spots, but if the Shawsheen there is as dry as the Spicket here it might not be worth it. Boston? Too far away.

Stay in bed constantly refreshing eBay all day? I’m still the highest bidder but there are 22.5 hours remaining.

Pet the kitty all day?

Finish Umbrella Academy and start Stranger Things or Orville or Westworld or….

I don’t know. In the immortal words of Traffic, from their second record, Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring?

Ebay = Stress

I put a bid on a Nikon camera with a lens that may or may not work last night. There were no bids on it at the time and the auction was set to end just after 9:00 on Sunday (tomorrow) night.

I just checked it and someone else put in a bid as well. It wasn’t enough to top my tiny max bid, but it bumped up the price from $10 to $17.50.

Eeek! Ebay is stressful!

Getting Mad at CVS

When I dropped off the first roll of film at CVS (the grossly expired roll that Dad loaded 30+ years ago and I finished two weeks ago) I was told I’d get the results back in 7-10 days. That was 12 days ago.

I can’t seem to find any photo processing labs here in the Merrimack Valley so I’m starting to look into online services. I don’t want to, but I will if I have two. Come on, CVS. Get your ass in gear.

Also, twice this week I’ve told myself I was gonna go-a-thriftin’ at lunch time in the hopes of scoring a film SLR fer cheap, and twice I’ve just stayed home. Tomorrow. I mean it this time. Seriously.

Let’s Try Again

The sun comes up at 5:11 tomorrow morning. The forecast, via the epic Weather Kitty app, predicts that the skies above Methuen will be clear and sunny.

Let’s try that playing with Dad’s camera in the morning before work thing again. Please Please Please let nothing go wrong. If anything does go wrong I will literally cry in my protein shake.

So photography nerd in the morning followed by a half day at work followed by a doctor’s appointment followed by (maybe) a trip to a music store to investigate trading in my Fender followed by visiting my mother followed by dinner with my love. That’s the plan.

Save That Roll

I did some Googling and some YouTubing today looking for ways to maybe save the half roll of film that I think I lost this morning. I found nothing.

Later, after work, I was on the Reddit app and I saw a post on a photography subreddit asking how to fix a roll that was accidentally rewound. Not the same problem I had today, but the same result.

The suggested fix was to reload the film and shoot blank pictures until you are past the last photo you knew you took. I think I was at shot number 12. I should put the film back in, sit in a dark room with the lens cap on, and click/wind at least 12 times. I’m thinking 14 to be safe.

Cool! I’m going to try it. Worst case scenario is I screw up a few pictures that likely weren’t good anyway. I can handle that. Not until the roll I loaded this morning is out though. I don’t want to do this twice.

I’ve also been poking around for Nikon SLRs that are as simple as Dad’s Pentax. The hope being I could use the lenses I already have for my D90 with a film camera. Unfortunately every model I look at is way more expensive than I expected. I was hoping to find old stuff for sub-$50 or so. Not likely.

It doesn’t matter. I’m good with what I have. Assuming it’s not somehow broken.