The Difference Between Film and Digital Photography

So there we were on the summit of Cadillac Mountain, the highest elevation in the state of Maine, looking out across Bar Harbor toward the Atlantic Ocean. The view was spectacular.

I had my Nikon Z5 out and I was snapping away left and right. You get a photo, you get a photo, you get a photo, BAM BAM BAM photos of everything! Oh, some other visitor stepped in front of me while I was pressing the shutter? No problem! Just line up the shot and take it again. Life is good!

Then I switched to my Nikon FG-20, loaded with Fuji Superia Xtra. I carefully line up a shot. Check the light meter, check the aperture, check the shutter speed, focus and refocus repeatedly. Snap. Wind the film to the next frame. Line up a second shot. Check the light meter, check the aperture, check the shutter speed, focus and refocus repeatedly. Snap, but just as a depress the shutter release button some numbnutz walks in front of me. MUTHAFUCKA YOU JUST COST ME ONE FRAME OF FILM! Quietly fantasize about throwing said numbnutz off the side of the mountain. Then line up the shot again and…

Yeah, that’s the difference. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s there.

Feeling Okay

My stomach is okay today. No issues at all. I am almost willing to declare that whatever started going wrong two days ago, and then went really seriously wrong yesterday, has passed. It’s 3:13pm and I’m an hour passed lunch. I have taken in 40 ounces of liquid and 56.86 grams of protein. Everything is on pace for a successful day.

So the question left to me is, did I do something wrong to cause my problems over the last two days, or was it a bug that I possibly caught from Harry as he was sick to his stomach all weekend. I was going to assume it was something I did wrong until Jen told me that she’s feeling sick to her stomach today. I think it might have been a bug after all. That almost makes me feel better about the whole thing, other than the fact Jen is feeling sick today, which sucks completely.

I am feeling well enough tonight to go out and run an errand for Jen, even though it bums me out on an unrelated level. She bought something from her favorite computer/electronics store recently but it needs to be returned. I am going to return it for her. The bummer part is that the store is in Cambridge, right down the street from Harvard Square, and right across the river from Boston’s Back Bay. I have been wanting to take a camera to both of those places for months now but haven’t had a chance. I could do it tonight but it will be dark and I won’t have time to stop and that makes it a two strikes and you’re out situation. Maybe I’ll be able to take some pics from stop lights. I’ll bring my DSLR and put it in auto mode, just in case. I won’t bring film though.

Speaking of pictures, the weather is going to be crappy tomorrow. No sunrise pics this time. It’s not supposed to rain until mid-morning though, so maybe I’ll take the film camera out to a couple of places around town. We’ll see. The DSLR will go to Vermont with me on Sunday but I don’t think the film camera will. We’re not planning on spending much time in Burlington so there won’t be many opportunities for picture taking.

On a final, also unrelated note, our bathroom has a floor again:

Camera Settings

All this film photography crap has me wondering if I should shoot black and white film. I think black and white might be a little cheaper, but I’ve always been a color guy. In the name of research I might set my DSLR to monochrome and pretend I am a black and white guy for a while.

My DSLR also has a Vivid color setting. I’ve always left it on the Standard color setting so I’ve never tried vivid before. I’m leaving it on vivid for now. Not sure if I like it or not. We’ll see.

Manual Mode Part 3

It’s 20 minutes to 11pm and I am still up. I need to be getting to sleep soon because that sunrise is going to be here before I know it and I needs me some sleep. Still, I wanted to get the last round of pics from today’s Manual Mode Adventure out. I think it’s safe to say that nothing I took today is very good, but at least it’s all there.

Note that even if I was trying to sleep right now I wouldn’t be able to because one of our neighbors just set off a roman candle and it sounds like the Union Army artillery during Pickett’s Charge.

But I digress. These are all from Walnut Grove Cemetery. I tried shooting on film at this spot, but this is where the camera jammed on me and I fucked up my first attempt at a roll of my own (my first actual roll of film, what I will call my zeroeth roll because I am a programmer, was the one that Dad loaded back in the 80’s. I can’t really count that as one of my own even though almost all of the shots were mine. I will hopefully getting those images back early next week. Fingers crossed), so there are not going to be any film shots to compare against. It’s okay though, I just like this spot.

Light Meter Breakthrough

99.999% of my fellow Nikon D90 users are going to want to punch me in the throat for being so clueless, but I’m a little tickled by today’s lunchtime discovery.

Dad’s camera has a light meter built into it. It’s a 100% manual device and the only electronic do-dad is the light meter. If it reads too high or low, you monkey with the aperture and the shutter speed until the little needle points to the middle of the meter. Without that little sucker in the viewfinder I don’t think I would have been able to do anything with the camera. I have been messing with a light meter app to suggest what settings I should start with, but once I have something setup I can tweak it as I look through the lens.

On my Nikon, I have never had a need for a light meter. I used an Auto function in almost every case. Sometimes I use shutter priority, so I set it to a certain time and then the camera calculates the aperture I need. I never had to figure out the settings for myself. The camera is smarter than I am anyway, so why question it?

Now that Dad’s Pentax is forcing me to actually do things for myself, I was wondering if the D90 could do the same thing when it’s in Manual mode? Turns out it can! There’s a button to set it up right on the top panel. It’s been there the whole time and I’ve never given it a thought. There is also a little digital meter display in the viewfinder. Again, I had never even noticed it. In fact, I want to go switch back to one of the auto settings and see if it goes away (I’ll do that another time). In manual mode though, there it is. Monkey with the aperture or the shutter speed and sure enough it moves around.

Right then, the next time I take the Nikon out for a stroll I am going full manual mode. Well… not for long exposures. I’ll stick to shutter priority for that, but everything else is manual mode!

Jump on this wagon with me, people! We’re rolling to a blurry, under/over exposed future!

Camera Comparison Part One

I am trying to do things to take my mind off of the fucking supreme court. Dad’s camera is getting the mental energy now because the alternative is me screaming my fucking head off.

I mentioned in a post earlier today (before the supreme court decided that women don’t deserve reproductive rights or healthcare) that I was going to try and do a comparison between Dad’s film camera and my digital camera. I finished off the roll of film that was in Dad’s camera in the process. Now I need to figure out how to get it developed, and I have to hope that the 30 year old film is actually able to be developed. I know people like shooting on expired film because it does funky things sometimes, but 30 year old expired film? I don’t know. I did just order a few rolls of film from Amazon. When they get here I might be able to do this for real, but I also have to learn how to know what the manual settings on Dad’s camera are, and how to set the manual settings on my camera to match. I also don’t have a lens that matches either one of Dad’s so that will mess things up too.

Anyway, I took the film out of the camera (I had to read the manual to figure it out) and I took the photos off of my camera’s memory card. They all suck. Sigh of frustration. I touched a couple of them up a little in Apple’s Photos app. I wasn’t going to do that, but I still have copies of the unedited photos on my desktop so I can do a “real” comparison, whenever I get the film developed… if it can be developed.

Here’s a couple of pics.

This one isn’t awful, but it ain’t good…