Tag: film camera

Film

We are going to Magic Kingdom today and there will be film. I hope you don’t mind waiting months to see the pics. Heh heh heh.

That’s my dad’s camera. I need to keep it safe while it’s out in the wild.

Less Than Two Hours

I am less than two hours away from winning an ebay auction for a cheap, Soviet medium format TLR camera from the 80’s. I am the only bidder so far. Think I am going to win? Neither do I, but let’s see how it goes.

I’m exhausted. I have a massive headache. I have body aches all over. This is the post-covid booster shot blues. I was planning no working in the office tomorrow but now I think I am going to push that off until Tuesday. Just on the off chance that I’m not quite over this by tomorrow morning. Here’s hoping a good nights sleep will fix me right up.

Random Sunday Night Thoughts

This week’s episode of The Penguin doesn’t launch for another 40 minutes so I am going to write a blog post to kill some of that time.

You ready?

Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith posted a picture on instagram today (at least I think it was today) that was taken backstage at a Maiden show in Toronto. In the photograph is one Mr Alex Lifeson who apparently is an Iron Maiden fan? Larry and Mike and I are going to see Maiden in less than two weeks. Do you think there’s a chance that Alex Lifeson will be at that show too? I hope so! I think it would be the best thing ever to watch Big Al air guitar to The Trooper. That would freakin’ rule.

Tomorrow is Monday. Back to work for everyone. Sad, painful, depressing. All that stuff. I have a small mountain of paperwork to do this week. I need to find a way to not be distracted by other work responsibilities so that I can get it all done as soon as humanly possible. I have the day off on Thursday because I wanted to be home and off the clock in time to run our house’s Trick or Treating.

I have one very important non-work responsibility that I have to take care of tomorrow. Well, two actually. I need to pick something up at the drug store for Jen tomorrow before work. That’s not what I am writing about, though it is important. The thing that I am writing about will also hopefully happen before work. I need to buy five tickets to an NCAA hockey game. UMass Lowell (my and my wife’s old school) at University of Vermont (my step daughter’s old and my step son’s current school). Harry and I went to a game last year. This year Jen and Bellana and Harry’s girlfriend are going to go too. I need to get the tickets in advance because I am crazy and don’t want to wait.

Hockey… as a family… how cool is that?

While on our day trip to Burlington, Vermont today, I took a camera with me. A film camera. Dad’s Pentax K1000 with a roll of Kentmere 400 (black and white) film. I shot about two thirds of the roll. I know for sure that I completely and utterly mangled a few of the photos, but one or two might come out okay. If the weather is okay on Thursday (Halloween) I might use the morning portion of my day off as a photo morning. I keep talking about Boston…. maybe I could go to Boston for a little while?

Okay, we’re now 25 minutes away form a new episode of The Penguin. I think I am going to post this literary masterpiece now and listen to some music until the show is released on the MAX app.

Happy Sunday, everyone. Have a good night.

Pentax 17

A new film camera. Who woulda thunk it?

I was really excited when I heard that Pentax was going to make a new camera model. My Dad’s camera, which hurled me down the film shootin’ rabbit hole that I likely will never be able to crawl out of, is a Pentax so that’s kind of karmically fitting.

Then they announced it was going to be half frame. Huh. Okay, I guess. I have enough trouble getting things to look half decent in a full frame resolution, I can only imagine how shitty my stuff would look at half of the resolution. I was still interested, but a little less interested.

Then I learned that it’s not an autofocusing camera, and it’s also not a manual focusing camera. It’s just a zone focus deal and since it’s not an SLR you don’t see through the lens when you look through the viewfinder, so focusing is literally guesswork. Huh.

Am I still interested? Yes. Am I as interested as I was a few days ago? No.

The YouTube is suddenly riddled with review videos. Today must be the officially sanctioned Pentax Press Day, or whatever they call it in the biz.

Here is one I haven’t watched yet:

Here is another one I haven’t watched yet:

Here is one that I am watching as I type this:

Here is one I have watched:

The Bad Flashes video just said the sale price will be $499 and the on sale date will be June 24th via the Pentax website. $499 is too expensive for me. My interest just dropped to very near zero. Sorry, Charlie. Maybe if the price comes down I will check it out, just to be a part of the party and stuff.

Here’s hoping it’s successful and leads to a new full frame SLR. That would be really cool.

Flash Fail

I don’t like using a flash when I take pictures. I just don’t like the way it looks. I use it sometimes, all of the indoor Christmas decorations pics from yesterday (except the owl) had the flash on, but generally speaking I avoid it as much as possible. When I was a kid and we had our cheap little point and shoot camera I thought the flash was a requirement. When Dad bought his SLR he had a separate flash that mounted on top of the camera but I don’t really remember him using it at all. The only times I remember him using the camera were outside during the day. Specifically, our one trip to Niagara falls where he let me use the camera for a while and I realized I kinda loved it.

When my sister found the camera in Dad’s dresser the flash was there and I took it with the rest of the stuff. I never tried to use it though, until today. I knew from my million or so viewings of how-to-use-your-manual-slr videos on the youtubes that there is a shutter speed setting for using an external flash. What about the aperture though? How do I know how to set that? Back to the youtubes I go. I watched a couple of videos this morning and it made perfect sense. The flash has an ISO setting and when you set it to your current film speed it tells you what aperture to use and the approximate distance the flash will be effective.

I set up my film camera, which currently does not have any film in it, to see if I could at least get the flash to flash. The unit wouldn’t turn on so the batteries must have been dead. I found the battery door, opened it up and… The last time the batteries were changed was probably some time in the mid 80’s. They have been sitting there all of those decades and one of them leaked like crazy. I was pretty surprised that only one of them leaked, but it was enough. The terminals are all corroded and changing the batteries didn’t work. I watched still more youtubes on cleaning battery connections and I know what I need to do before I try again, I am just not entirely sure I want to bother trying. Like I said at the start, I don’t like using a flash. I might try to use it on Christmas morning, or something, but other than that? I don’t really see myself going through the trouble of setting it up. Maybe this weekend I’ll try to clean the terminals, just to see how that goes. Until then, I am not going to worry about it.

On an unrelated note, our plans for New York this weekend have been canceled. Not because of Covid-19 paranoia, but because of some back pain issues. We’re still planning to go to Bellana’s concert in Vermont on Sunday. We’ll have to see how it goes. I doubt I’ll bring a film camera there. It’ll be too dark in the room and I don’t want to use a flash.

Harry is Home

Harry is home and it’s glorious!

Not sure what we have on the agenda today. Jen and Harry are going to go shopping for desserts for tomorrow’s mini-thanksgiving. I am going to make short visits to both parents. Also, in film camera news, there are train tracks running behind the rehab facility that Dad is currently visiting and I have black and white film in the camera… cliche, anyone?

I did 30 minutes of faux running today already. My sort of plan these days is 45 minutes on weekdays and 30 on weekends to give my feet a little bit of a break. I haven’t closed my calorie/move ring, but it’s 2/3 closed. I’ll close it today, no sweat.

What else? I want to play some guitar today, but I want to hang around doin’ nuttin’ with Harry and Jen more so… National Solo Album Month may be dying on the vine this year. I might try to get up stupidly early this week and spend an hour or so recording using DI and amp sims rather than my Deluxe Reverb. That feels like cheating after all these years of only using a real amp, but what can you do.

I mentioned yesterday that I had a really bad time with lunch. The same thing happened with dinner. I dished out a little less than four ounces of food, took 2-3 bites, and hit the pain/nausea failure point. I ended up pausing dinner for an hour or so and then I was okay. I was nervous about breakfast today after two bad experiences in a row, but I am almost finished an I feel okay. Here’s hoping lunch and dinner go okay too.

All right, kids. Time to go get my shit together and go visit a couple of parents. We’ll talk later, m’kay? M’kay.

Loaded

Dad’s camera is loaded with a roll of the cheapest film I could find. It fought me the whole way. It just wouldn’t stay on the track and roll on the roll. I’m guessing I flashed a bunch of shots, but we will have to see.

I took one picture of my beloved wife. I’ll wait for Halloween to take more, and that will probably be just a shot of the lit up pumpkin on the front step.

The film is ISO 100 which is super slow. I’m nervous that anything less than full sunlight is going to be too dark. Fortunately dad’s 50mm prime lens goes to f2 and let’s in a ton of light.

Guitars on Film

When worlds collide.

Oh yeah, there’s that film Instagram too, in case I haven’t mentioned it in the last four minutes…….

Things I’ve Learned Today

I have learned two things since getting my four rolls of film scans today. Both are very important.

First, the Ebay Nikon works fine. The lens feels like it’s starting to fall apart, which is concerning, and there is a little bit of a rattle in there somewhere when you’re moving around. Both concerning. I half expected all of the images to be destroyed by light leaks. I was seriously nervous.

Nope, most of the pictures look fine. Some are way better than just fine. Some are blurry messes. I think that might have been due to me fumbling with low light and slow shutter speeds. It is legitimately hard to focus that lens. That’s part of it too. User error to the max. Those failures are a statistically relevant percentage of the whole, but for the most part things look great. $17.50 well spent. Now if I can just get a 50mm prime with a really wide aperture. Nikon Acquisition Syndrome rears it’s ugly head.

The second thing I’ve learned is kinda stereotypical, kinda infuriating, and kinda really freakin’ funny.

I may be the King of sticking my finger in front of the lens. There are a bunch of pictures from both cameras where there is something in the way in the lower right hand corner of the image. It’s a bit of my left index finger. Most likely my knuckle. I picked up the Nikon and focused on a couple of things and then stopped myself to review where my left hand was sitting, and sure enough my big fat knuckle was sticking up and in the shot. Dumb ass. It doesn’t really ruin any of the pictures, but it’s something I am going to work on never ever doing again.

One bonus thing that I learned, setting the camera’s ISO to 200 when you’re using 400 is not really the end of the world. The first time I changed film in the Nikon I took out a roll of Kodak Gold 200 and put in a roll of FujiFilm 400 and forgot to change the ISO setting. I didn’t notice until after I had taken 6-7 pictures. I expected them to be train wrecks. They weren’t. They seem a little overexposed, but not terribly. They all look pretty good.

Overall, I am pleased with what I see. I’ll post them on the other page and then reblog them here. I am going to try and limit myself to one or two a day. These puppies need to last for a while.

Blur

I took my little Nikon film camera with me to visit my mother. The idea being if Waze took me home through downtown Andover I would stop and take a pic or two. Waze did not take me home through downtown Andover but it did almost kill me. Well, the schmuck who tried to pull out of the breakdown lane without getting a running start almost killed me. The camera was on the front seat and slamming on the breaks to avoid death hurled it off the seat and onto the floor.

So I was sitting here, in the living room, in between episodes of Stranger Things, and Patches was just sitting there on the floor watching me. I took a pic with my phone and then tried to take a pic with the film camera. You know, just to make sure it still works after the trauma of the car ride.

Just as I was about to hit the shutter button Patches stood up and started walking. The shutter speed was pretty slow so I was pretty sure the images was going to be a little blurry. The first thing I did after hearing the click of the shutter was look at the back of the camera… which is where the display would have shown the image if I had taken it with a digital camera… instead of taking it with a film camera, which I did.

I am such a tool.