I don’t have a clue how to properly edit photos. Not a single clue. I’ve been messing around with Lightroom on my iPad though and thought I’d post something for shits and giggles.
This picture was taken in my first roll of film and developed at a drugstore.
Once I got past the glee of seeing my first film shots it occurred to me that this kinda looks like moldy shit. Was it me? Was it the film? Was it the developing? Was it the scan? I didn’t know.
Here is a similar picture taken with my DSLR.
The colors here look accurate while the colors on the film pic look like two day old diarrhea. I tried messing with the film image in Lightroom to see if I could fix things a little.
I think it’s better but still not right. I also don’t really know what I did to get here.
What does all this mean? It means I don’t have a clue, but I want to do more. It also means I’m not getting film developed at the drug store anymore because none of the film developed and scanned by Old School Film Labs looks this crappy.
We will see how the first black and white shots come out. Hopefully soon. Fingers crossed for happy results.
I took the car back to Valvoline today to see if they might have messed something up on yesterday’s oil change. They said everything looked okay but they drained and refilled it anyway. My cynical side wonders if that means they did find something but didn’t want to tell me. Probably not.
The oil pressure light was off when I started the car but I expected that. We had been driving around looking at lights for quite a while before it popped on last night and the engine was nice and hot, whereas this morning it was bellow freezing. I drove around for a while after leaving the shop just to see if warming it up would trip the light again. It did not. Is the car clear to give to Bellana? No clue, but we’ll do it and see what happens.
I made a couple of stops along the way. I stopped at the Spicket dam and took some film pics. I also stopped at St Mary’s Cemetery and took a few more. I might have actually been in Bellevue Cemetery though. I’m not sure where one ends and the other starts. I also stopped at Goodwill and dropped off a bag of jackets. The winter jacket I replaced the other day was in the bag. The leather jacket Jen bought me for Christmas in 2007 that I still wore all the time even though it was pretty ratty and the lining was falling apart was in the bag as well. I was sad to let that one go. The sentimental value of a gift from our first christmas together is very high, but I asked her if I should donate it or keep it and she voted for donate, so off it went.
As for fun with film, I took my camera and Dad’s 50mm lens. I want to bring that pairing to Disney but I feel I need to test it a lot first. I learned quite a bit today. First, the viewfinder gets REALLY dim when the aperture is small. I started at f5.6 and it was okay. I bumped it up to f11 at one point and I could barely see anything. I took to opening it all the way, f2, to focus, then closing it down to take the photo. That brings up the second issue: Focusing is a royal bitch. That’s a problem with manual lenses on all cameras, but it seemed especially difficult for me today. I hope I got things right, but it was a bit of a struggle for my old-person-eyes. Speaking of old person eyes, I can barely read the light meter on that camera. Dad’s camera has an arrow that moves around as you change the shutter speed or the aperture. When it points to the middle of the meter you’re good. My camera has an arrow that points to the shutter speed you need to use based on the aperture setting. It’s almost impossible for me to read the values. My eyes just don’t want to make it out, and it’s worse when the viewfinder dims. I eventually switched to the Auto setting, which is just Aperture Priority. I am thinking that’s what I’ll do at Disney. My manual film camera suddenly isn’t as appealing in full manual. It’s cool though, I can still go manual like crazy with the DSLR.
I did not finish the roll of film in the camera, so I will need to take it out again before I can send it out for developing. I think I have eight or nine shots left. It’s hard to tell exactly. Maybe the cat will come out and say hello and I’ll sneak in another pic of two.
I also had my digital point and shoot with me so here are some driving around picture. Enjoy!
The Clock
I never even noticed this place before. Is it really ye olde town hall, or was Broadway (route 28) just formerly known as Town Hall Place? Whatever, it’s photo a day 109/365.
The glory and grandeur that is the Nevins Library.
Stop Light Theater: Red Edition
Stop Light Theater: Green Edition
This liquor store wall will eventually end up on film. I promise.
Salem, NH’s great big honkin’ flag.
And that, friends is the story of the oil light. I hope you enjoyed your stay today. Come back any time.
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:
I just reblogged this from the film blog, noticed that somehow the title was in italics, fixed the title in the original post, deleted the reblog, tried to reblog the post again and found I could not, assumed it had something to do with the comment on the original post, deleted the comment, still couldn’t re-reblog, said screw it and posted it directly.
The first time I sent film to Old School Photo Lab, I shipped the film out on Monday August 1st, received an email saying it arrived just after noon on August 2nd, and received an email saying my scans were available just after noon on Wednesday August 3rd.
That turn around time seems too fast to be true. I should not expect things to go that quickly again.
Having said that…
I shipped two rolls of film to them on Tuesday September 6th… does that mean I should expect an arrival email today, Wednesday September 7th, between noon and 1:00pm? It’s 11:30 now, so I should be hearing from them in the next 90 minutes? That would be pretty freakin’ sweet!
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.
Inside the Red Head's Head 