Tag: film

Shooting in the Morn?

Jen booked an appointment for early tomorrow morning so I’m going to be up with her. I guess that will give me a chance to go out and shoot me some pics.

I’m thinking of bringing the Nikon family over to the rail trail. I took dad’s Pentax there once but the film roll broke or jammed or some shit and the pics I took were ruined and chucked. I’ll try again while also maybe trying some digital black and white. That’ll be a fun way to kick off a photo-a-day thing, right?

It all depends on the whether. I think I have 15 or so shots left on the current roll of film. When it’s done I’ll have two rolls to develop. Then I want to buy a couple of rolls of the cheapest black and white film I can find. I want to use dad’s camera for the great black and white experiment. I think dad’s camera is just plain better than mine.

I’m still planning on turning our January Disney trip into the greatest film photography experience in human history, but I think I need to stock up on a few more rolls first. I’d like to try and get a couple of rolls of high ISO film to use at night, but that’s going to be on the expensive side so I need to save up a little first.

And that’s the film situation at this moment in time.

And now it’s bed time. Goodnight, Moon.

Edits

I don’t know Jack about editing photos. I usually just let Apple Photos do it for me. Today I decided to change that so I installed Lightroom Mobile on my iPad and started pressing buttons and dragging sliders around.

How’d I do?

Not messed with
Messed with
Not messed with
Messed with

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.

Happy Nerd News on a Busy Morning

Today has been a touch on the nutso-busy side. Not a complaint, just a statement. Good things are going on, they are just taking up time.

I haven’t had the opportunity to post anything yet today, which is a little unusual. I haven’t been able to comment on how trading off one of my favorite Red Sox players has resulted in two wins against a World Series contender. What? How does that work? I haven’t been able to mention how I am suddenly kind of a San Diego Padres fan. Holy murderers row, Batman!

I had to take a second and write this post though because I just got an email from the photo lab and they sent me the scans of my four rolls of film. I’ve only looked at a couple of images so far, just to make sure they came out, and WOW do the ones I’ve looked at look good! Pics from Dad’s Pentax and from the Ebay Nikon both look excellent. My lunch break will see me getting everything up onto Flickr, but hot damn am I happy right now! Film-Photographically-Happy to be precise.

WOOHOO!

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:

Asset0011

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

Asset0017

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.