Digital vs Analog

I am pretty nervous about my camera failure this morning. Is the camera broken? Did I break the camera? Will the same thing happen again? I loaded a new roll of film into it when I got home and it seems okay. I don’t know though. Am I screwing up Dad’s camera?

I did another experiment today. Mostly just as an excuse to take a couple of pictures and make sure it’s winding correctly. It is. So far, so good.

I took out my D90, put it on my tripod (which is broken! The head piece doesn’t move anymore. Sand in the gears?), and pointed it at a candle. I used the light meter app and set up the camera manually. I then turned off all of the lights and took a picture. I then did the same thing except that I turned off the lights and then checked the light meter. The only setting on the camera I changed was the shutter speed.

Then I swapped cameras and did it all again. All of the same manual settings, everything. I took two pictures and the film advanced successfully. No issues at all.

Maybe someday I’ll get the pics developed and I’ll be able to compare, but for now I just have the digital stuff.

Aperture f/5.6, ISO 400, Shutter speed 1/30:

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Aperture f/5.6, ISO 400, Shutter speed 1:

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Now, we just have to wait for the film… someday. Remember, I just sent a roll off to get developed that is at least 30 years old. So… be patient, m’kay?

No Pain, No Gain, Something Something

I walked/marched in place for 30 minutes this morning before work. At lunch time I rode the exercise bike for 15 minutes. I have been trying to work the bike into my daily routine for a couple of weeks. Hopefully things will work out in such a way that I can do this regularly.

The downside is that my legs feel like rubber and walking is a little bit of an adventure. Yikes.

Here comes some camera nerd thoughts. Ready? Okay, I installed a light meter app on my phone yesterday. Dad’s camera has a built in light meter and I would utterly be toast without it. I assume my Nikon has one built in too, but I don’t know where it is or how to use it (now that I think of it, it’s probably just the auto mode). At lunch today I tested it out a smidge. I picked something to shoot, used the light meter, used manual mode on the Nikon, set everything the way the meter told me to, and took a picture. It looked okay on the D90’s little view screen. I then turned off half of the lights in the cellar and did it again. The picture looked okay but it was a little on the dark side (insert Vader’s breathing here).

I then repeated the entire process with the Pentax. The internal light meter looked good in both cases, so I think the app is probably close to accurate. How will the pictures look when I get them developed? I haven’t a freakin’ clue. Not even a tiny inkling of an idea. It may be a long time before I get the results. I took the roll that was in the camera (the 35ish year old roll that Dad started and I finished) to CVS on Saturday. They said 7-10 days… so I should be getting a call from them any minute now. (For those of you reading this post at some random future date, it hasn’t even been 48 hours yet. I was kidding. Get it?)

What else? Do I need to get a camera bag for Dad’s camera, or do I need to rearrange the bag that I have so that it can hold both cameras? My bag has the D90, two lenses, and some other little things. I can change the size of each section in the bag so I know I can fit the camera in there somehow, I just won’t be able to fit all of the other stuff. I have three lenses for the D90, including one that would be on the camera, and two for the K1000, again including one that’s actually on the camera. I may have to leave the extra lenses at home when I take the bag out somewhere. Maybe I get a bag for the two cameras and another bag for the lenses? Do amateur goofballs do that?

I also saw some youtube videos showing a couple of accessories that have kicked off my camera gear acquisition syndrome. Amazon has a remote shutter that screws on to the actual shutter switch. I could use the shit out of that for long exposures. I also saw a timer that is a little windup clock thing that also screws onto the shutter. I think K1000s might have come with that at some point. I wonder if Dad had one. I can’t find any of those anywhere online, including ebay.

And that, dear friends and neighbors, is my lunch break post for today.

I Have the Bug Again

I have it again. I definitely have the ol’ shutterbug once again. And I ain’t talking about no iPhone here.

I took the roll of film that was in Dad’s camera to CVS today. They will send it somewhere to get developed and I should have it back in 7-10 days. Still no clue how much it will cost.

I spent some time today trying to find stores that actually sell 35mm film. There are none. At least not in a reasonable radius from home. I even put a post onto a film photography subreddit and got nothing back. Looks like film shopping is a fully online experience for me. No instant gratification for this guy.

So I don’t have any film for Dad’s camera. I guess I’ll go shoot the sunrise with my digital tomorrow. The sunrise is at 5:09am. My alarm is set for 4:00. I’m a psycho idiot and proud of it. We will see if I actually get up, and if so we will see how the pictures come out. I’m going to try to use Manual mode as much as I can, duck and cover.

A Little Better

I went back and tried to redo the picture of the guitar from the previous post. I did this in manual mode on my DSLR. Inside the camera, I had the aperture set to f/5.3 and the shutter set to 10. The ISO was set to 400 because that was the speed of the film I had in Dad’s camera.

The EXIF data in Flickr mostly matches, but where I would expect to see a shutter speed it gives an Exposure of 1/10. The too dark pic on the previous post was in Aperture priority mode, I think. This pic was in manual mode. The too dark pic was f5.0 and Exposure 1/30. Does that mean the shutter was 30? I don’t know. I think it might be time for me to finally start paying attention to these values. I’ll also note that I don’t think Dad’s camera can match these settings exactly, but I am hoping my camera can match what Dad’s camera does. I guess.

Anyway, this one looks pretty good to me. Not great, but pretty good.

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