Tag: film camera

New Camera Day

Happy new camera day, everyone! I bought a Nikon N90 35mm film camera from eBay about a week ago and it was delivered today. 

The last two cameras I bought from eBay were broken (a Nikon F-401 with a broken aperture dial and a little Nikon Coolpix S7000 point and shoot that every image comes out blurry) so I was nervous about this one. Would it work? Would it show up in pieces? Who could really say?

Fortunately it seems to be in good shape. It’s practically mint condition, which feels weird to me. It had batteries in it already, which made me a little nervous, and all of the functionality I know how to test seems to be working fine. When I change the aperture or the shutter speed the light meter display changes. When I set it to a slow shutter speed it takes a lot longer for the shutter to close than when I use a fast shutter speed. I can set the ISO and the metering. Most important, with the first of the two lenses I’ve tested, the autofocus works. That sound you hear is my huge sigh of relief.

I won’t truly know if the camera is okay until I shoot a roll of film and get it developed and scanned and see the results. For now though, so far so good. I put a roll of film in it and took a few pics in the back yard. One of these days I’ll take it out in town and finish off the roll. I might go for two test rolls. One with the 70–200mm f4–5.6 lens and one with the 50mm f1.8 lens. I already had an AF Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8 and this new lens is the same name and the same specs but the physical lens itself is a little different. One is probably a minor update of the other. We’ll see how it works.

I have been wanting a camera like this for a while now, but it was the addition of the zoom lens that drew me in and made me pull the trigger. The lens is in really great shape. Like… how is it in this good of a shape? This kit is at least 30 years old. Was it stored in a safe or something?

I don’t know what the back story is. I just know that for now at least I am feeling good about all of this.

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.