Tag: film

Boston

We’re home from our walking around Boston visit. We stayed mostly around Atlantic ave and the warf area, but also went to Haymarket and strolled through Quincy Market. Touristy stuff. It was a good time from the mental health perspective, though we tried to get into the Aquarium and failed, and from a nerd-shoots-film point of view it was awesome*. I finished the nearly-finished roll on the Nikon, shot through a roll on the Pentax, and then shot about 2/3 of another roll on the Nikon. Yikes!

I now have four rolls of film ready to develop, so I think it’s time to pick an online photo lab and ship things out. Today, or tomorrow, if I can. Here’s hoping everything comes out and there isn’t anything wrong with the ebay Nikon.

Fingers photographically crossed.

*It went awesome, assuming the photos actually come out.

I had to take a couple of pics with my iPhone, just for instant blogging gratification purposes.

I think I got this guy on film too.

Switching over to the Pentax and loading/unloading the Nikon, while Harry had a donut. The donut was pretty much the sole reason for the trip.

Rough Night Tonight – Half Day Tomorrow

It was a pretty quiet day around here. Harry stayed at his dad’s house last night. Bellana stayed here but left for dad’s at around noon. We missed them both but made the best of it. Jen was busy so I mostly just goofed off with the new film blog and Instagram. The Instagram already has more engagement in two days than my main account has had in however many years it’s been up. It’s nuts. I put a couple of film related tags on each post and people are coming from all around. I’m getting more notice than I usually get from Flickr, and I do all right (by my own personal, meager, non- viral, non-influencer standards) on Flickr.

The rough patch came at dinner. I took one bite that was way too big. I knew it was bad as I was chewing it, but I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. Nope. I got nice and sick. I felt queasy for a while and thought it was going to pass. Nope. My food tracking spread sheet has a column for nausea. On a scale of 1-10, that particular instance was a 10. The worst experience yet, by a long way.

I wanted to play guitar today but did not. I probably won’t tomorrow either. I took a half day in the morning because I thought I was bringing Bellana to the Registry of Motor Vehicles (or whatever New Hampshire calls it). Nope. Dad is bringing her. I am now on car inspection detail instead. I want to be out early enough to warm up the car and get to the garage before they open. If I can get in and out quick I might work on some song ideas before I punch in. Or maybe I’ll put that weight bench together. We’ll see.

Until then, g’night.

Expired Film

If you were wondering what a photo shot on a roll of film that expired over 30 years ago looks like:

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If you were wondering what a photo that was taken over 30 years ago but was not developed until today looks like:

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I’m not sure where Dad took this picture. Cape Cod maybe? Or maybe it was on a Men’s Club trip to Myrtle Beach? No idea.

Photo a Day Weirdness

So I am not doing a third consecutive photo a day thing on Flickr. Nope. I am not two months away from completing a third year with at least one photo taken every single day without exception. Nope. Not doing it.

The film thing makes it weird. I took like 15 pictures today that will not get to Flickr for weeks at least, and will not even have exif data with the dates embedded into the file and the camera and lens used and the aperture and ISO and shutter speed. They are going to be just like… pictures… only. How strange is that? I am going to have to remember which cameras shot which images and which lenses they used. Well, the Nikon only has one lens but the Pentax has two.

So weird.

FG-20: It Seems to Work

I put film in the new/ebay camera. It was a little difficult getting it to advance. It moved okay when the door was open, but not at all when it was closed. I think I need to roll it back a little to tighten it. It seems that way at least.

I also have to remember to half-push the shutter to get the light meter to work. That has gone wrong once as my attempt to half push accidently turned into a full push. Woops. So far it seems to be advancing the film correctly. Hopefully that continues for… forever, I guess.

Now I just have to shoot the whole roll and get it developed so that I can know the whole thing actually really works instead of just feels like it works. I also need to know if there’s anything fatal with the lens. It seems okay, but focusing feels a little difficult.

It’s all very interesting.

FG-20

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Welp, I gots me a film camera that I can use when I would otherwise be nervous about dropping and breaking Dad’s film camera. The Ebay listing described the lens as wobbly. The focusing ring feels a little loose, but everything else seems okay. Fingers crossed, right?

All of the mechanical parts seem to be working fine. I don’t have film in it yet, but I will at some point soon. Lunch break just started, don’tchaknow.

Silent on the CVS Front

It’s been two weeks and two days since I dropped off my first roll of film at CVS in Methuen. No word from them yet. It’s long enough that my second roll of film is now within the 7-10 day window. It’s been eight days.

Pretty much guaranteed that I won’t be using CVS again. I’m going to have to start trying online labs. There is one in Maine and one in Portsmouth, NH. They both look promising and the shipping time will be nice and short. I have one roll of film sitting in my desk ready to go. I’ll hold on to it until I have another roll or two to develop and I’ll send them all off together. The Ebay camera is supposed to be here by the weekend, so I’m probably going to want to shoot a roll on that to test it out. The seller was iffy on the lens he/she is sending along with the camera body. If it’s bad, developing a roll of film will show that, and then I can wait for Santa to get a lens upgrade.

I need a less dumb hobby, don’t you think?

Unrelated note: There is a fly in here with me. It has the whole friggin’ cellar to bother but it’s hanging around near me and it’s driving me crazy. I turned off all of my desk lamps in the hopes it will go find other lights to circle, but it’s still hanging around me. Maybe it is drawn to the window? Maybe my monitor is brighter than each individual ceiling light? That’s doubful.

Either way, as soon as that sucker lands somewhere within reach, the little notebook sitting on my desk to my right and I are going to terminate it with extreme prejudice. Splat, bitch.

ADDENDUM: The fly has ended. The world is safe once again.

Getting Mad at CVS

When I dropped off the first roll of film at CVS (the grossly expired roll that Dad loaded 30+ years ago and I finished two weeks ago) I was told I’d get the results back in 7-10 days. That was 12 days ago.

I can’t seem to find any photo processing labs here in the Merrimack Valley so I’m starting to look into online services. I don’t want to, but I will if I have two. Come on, CVS. Get your ass in gear.

Also, twice this week I’ve told myself I was gonna go-a-thriftin’ at lunch time in the hopes of scoring a film SLR fer cheap, and twice I’ve just stayed home. Tomorrow. I mean it this time. Seriously.

How Did it Go

So based on the previous post you may know that I went to the beach this morning to shoot the sunrise with Dad’s camera. How did it go? Did I learn anything new?

Last night I checked the weather forecast for Hampton Beach, NH on weather.com. It said the skies would be clear and the sunrise would be at 5:13am. The first part of that was accurate. The second part… not so much. The Dark Skies app said that sunrise in Methuen would be at 5:13. I wonder if somehow the weather.com app got confused and gave me local sunrise time instead of the time for the location I was viewing?

I got out of bed at 4:20 or so, which was 20 minutes later than I planned. I got dressed quick, grabbed my stuff, forgot the bottle of gatorade I put in the fridge last night, and hit the road. Waze was telling me I should get there with a few minutes to spare. It was almost right. There’s a draw bridge just before you enter the Hampton Beach area and the bridge went up just as I was getting to it. That plus the inaccurate sunrise time did it. I was late. The sun was breaking the horizon at about 9:10 or so, and I didn’t get down to the beach until a minute or so later.

It was also high tide, and my usual spot was both under water and crowded with people. In the post Covid world, a crowd of people is three. At least it is to me. I boogied down to the next beach entrance and had a nice spot all to myself. I took a few pics and then attempted some long exposure fun.

The most the camera can do is one second, but it also has a bulb mode where the shutter will stay open as long as you hold the shutter release down. Unfortunately for me, actually holding the thing down means the image will be shaky because my hands will be shaky. That’s why I bought a cheap little shutter release cable. You screw it onto the button on the camera, and then you can control the shutter without actually touching the camera. It also locks itself so you can push it, let go, wait for as long as you need, then release it.

I made one super dumb ass goof in this process. I tried three long exposures. About 30 seconds, about 15 seconds, and a ridiculous three minutes. Unfortunately, with the sound of the ocean a few feet away, the sound of the cable triggering sounds pretty similar to the camera triggering so after the first shot I didn’t notice that I forgot to advance the film. Same thing happened after the second shot. I only noticed the third time because I took the camera off the tripod and tried to use it normally. Sooooo I set it up again (after moving back a few feet, the tide was getting close to me) and did it right.

I finished the roll with some shots of the waves and the sun hitting the wet sand. I will be completely shocked if anything I did today looks decent, but I finished a roll of 24 and unloaded the camera without any problems, and setup a new roll (Kodak ColorPlus 200, 36 exposures) and I am ready for whatever is next. Probably pictures of the cat.

I think I am done with film projects for a while now. I’ve shot three rolls successfully, including the one that was in the camera when I took possession of it, and I haven’t seen a single image yet. Two rolls were dropped off at CVS and the third just went into the desk drawer that I use for photography stuff. This whole lack of instant feedback thing is actually stressing me out a little. If I had a digital camera with me today I’d already be posting the results. Now? Who the hell knows if I’ll ever get anything useable back?

Film man… film.

Bag

Dad’s camera has a bag of its own now.

The main pocket has the camera, the second lens, and a three pack of Fuji film. The front pocket has a little remote shutter cable that I found super cheap on Amazon and the ND filter I use with my Nikon. It doesn’t screw onto either of Dad’s lenses, but it does fit over them all snug like. I think it will be okay to use so long as there are no earthquakes.

The forecast for the coast at sunrise tomorrow calls for clear skies. If it stays that way, I am going. I am going and I am only bringing Dad’s camera. I’ll probably only use the 50mm lens, and I will only take a couple of cracks at long exposure, and I will only use the 24 shot roll that’s in the camera now. I just want to see how things look.

Last night I watched a bunch of YouTube videos on tips for film beginners. They all said don’t use drugstores like CVS to develop your film. I have been trying to get Google to tell me if I have any actual film labs in my area, but I don’t think I do. There is one in Methuen but their website says they no longer process film. I’m going to have to find an online service and ship to them. Or… I can just use CVS. I have two rolls there already (one will hopefully be coming back to me soon) so maybe I am just stuck with them.

I was also hoping to hit the Salvation Army store in Salem to see if they had any cameras on the cheap, but they are closed Sunday and tomorrow is a holiday. I think I will have to punt until next week. I also clearly remember going to a huge Goodwill (I think) store somewhere around here. It might be in Manchester. We donated the kids’ bikes there when we remodeled the garage. I just can’t remember exactly where it was, and Jen doesn’t remember it at all.

Google, my friend, don’t fail me now!