I had some time to kill while my wife went for a run while training for the Pittsburgh Marathon, so I visited Ruby Amphitheater in Morgantown, WV as I had heard that the cherry trees were in bloom. Wow, they did not disappoint. Having so much time in one spot forced me to finally slow down and take my time, chasing light and investigating every angle.
This was my first time shooting kodak Kodacolor 100, and I was not impressed. The majority of photos I kept were actually shot on Fujifilm 400 (which is really Kodak Ultracolor 400) and it was on this day that I decided it would be my primary from here on out. It’s readily available, has noticeable grain but not too much, you can push it a few stops in a pinch, and it looks like childhood to me.
I capped off the day by taking the most poignant photo yet. It doesn’t exactly belong with the other photos from the day, but the irony was too much to bear.
My wife and I had a lovely time in Key West for our 20th anniversary. It was February, so the weather was warm but mild, and the streets weren’t too busy.
Leading up to the trip, everyone spoke about how you just HAD to visit Duval Street. We did, and it was nice, but renting bikes and exploring the island away from the crowd is the best way to experience Key West. The excitement and chaos is there when you want it, but a few streets back is quiet and subdued – plus that’s where all the iguanas hang out.
I carried my Nikon FE2 everywhere, paired with the Nikon AF NIKKOR 24-85mm f/2.8-4 D lens I ordered from KEH specifically for this adventure. It is a large lens, and heavier than I expected, but it’s fast for a zoom, performs well enough of a film camera, and is stupidly flexible when it comes time to frame up a shot. In spite of its heft, it has become my go-to lens for travel.
Most of the photos I took on this trip were on Lomography Color Negative 800 ISO film. It has prominent grain and soft color rendering, perfect for a nostalgic beach vibe. It also does well when converted to black and white, should the image call for it. I got a few favorites from this trip, and would love to go back for more.
January brought snow, and a trip to Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, PA with my wife and her folks. It was a wonderful opportunity to work on shooting handheld in difficult lighting conditions and manually metering for exposure instead of relying on aperture priority mode.
So a funny thing sometimes happens when people find out you are getting into shooting and developing film. If they have a bunch of old cameras shoved in a closet somewhere, sometimes – if you’re lucky – they end up on your desk at work. I’m a lucky guy, as this happened to me.
A coworker (my boss, actually) gifted me a Nikon FM, an FM2, and a selection of lenses and accessories that once belonged to his father. This gave me plenty of things to experiment with, but I missed having access to aperture priority mode, so I soon procured a Nikon FE2 that would happily accept all of the same lenses.
Finally, I was shooting, developing, and scanning 100% on my own. I still had have much to learn, but that’s what the internet is for. It’s around this time that I started to see more photos per roll that I would consider keepers. Good enough to hang around the office/house anyway. Note that I don’t attribute this to the gear exactly, but having so many new toys to play with kept me invested enough that I started shooting every chance I got. I started going on photo walks during my lunch hour, and even joined a local photography club.
My color processing greatly improved during this time as well, much attributed to picking up a Darkroom Helper from Pira.mx.
Eventually, I settled on the FE2 and an all-in-one Nikon AF NIKKOR 24-85mm f/2.8 lens that also sports decent macro focus. It’s big and heavy, but having it with me means not having to carry multiple lenses on the days when I just want to play and be ready for anything.
The Nimslo3D was ahead of it’s time, except it was also late on delivery, so it was always bound to fail.
A four-lens camera that essentially shot two images per frame of 35mm film in portrait orientation, you would send the negatives away to be printed behind a lenticular sheet for a 3D effect. Honestly, the idea sounds awesome, but a manufacturing delay, strike, rising costs, and decline in interest sealed its fate.
Also, that ad is terrible and frightening, so there’s that.
Finding one in working condition online isn’t too tricky, but they can be a little on the expensive side, considering that it is a plastic novelty camera that is prone to failure. I lucked out and found one for around $80 with flash, untested. Luck would strike again, as it arrived fully functional!
There is a small demand for these cameras these days thanks to the minor trend of creating “wigglegrams”. Essentially short animations of the four frames. There’s a Reddit community for them, numerous clones, and not one but two digital versions in development, plus several open-source alternatives. For a commercial failure, people sure do love this little oddity.
And why not? It’s fun, easy to use, and the results look cool as hell. The problem is it’s a little on the fragile side, almost always needs a flash (people hate flash these days it seems), and requires some skill to scan and arrange the photos into a GIF or short video to share. The company that printed the photos has long since gone, and I’m not aware of any company that still does prints of lenticular photos with any consistency. You can try your hand at making them at home using some more third-party software, but it’s not a simple process by any means.
This isn’t a camera you carry with you wherever you go, but if you are attending a party or wedding, or can find a local band that doesn’t mind flash photography, you’re in for a real treat.
Up to this point, every image I had developed was processed by The Darkroom photo lab. They do fantastic work! I wanted to start processing my own film, though, and after a brief discussion with the folks at Bernie’s Photo Center in Pittsburgh, PA I learned that the color process had recently been simplified into a two-step process. Temperature control was still just as important as ever, but the timing was easier to handle. I figured, why not?
I quickly learned that just because you can still find Fujifilm 400 at your local WalMart or CVS doesn’t mean it’s worth buying. Chances are if you live in a small town like me, that film has been there for nearly a decade and is expired. That was certainly the case with my first few rolls, but I also cannot rule out the fact that there is a learning curve to developing film – especially in color – so the quality on these first images is sketchy. By the third or fourth roll, I feel like I was getting the hang of it, even if my color correction of the negatives still left a lot to be desired.
I also switched from scanning on a lithe table with a mid-range DLSR, to using a dedicated 35mm scanner, which helped to bolster my confidence in the process immensely.
Probably my first attempt at earnestly taking good photos with film, I brought the Minolta X-370 (and several other cameras) with me to Top Sail / Surf City, NC for vacation. Still very green, I made a lot of mistakes, but it was during this trip that I caught the bug and decided film photography something into which I wanted to dive deeper.
Looking back at these photos now, I can start to see some potential. My issue then, as it is now, is that I’d grown so accustomed to quickly snapping a pic and moving on. Film honestly demands more from you, and it starts with slowing down and paying attention. Sure, you need to consider light and composition, but you cannot ignore that each shot comes at a literal cost. Is this image worth taking? Developing? Printing? Displaying?
For the majority of these photographs, no. They are snapshots of my vacation. In that sense, they are special to me, but they are not portfolio-worthy. Not every photo needs to be.
Clearly having not learned my lesson about lugging the C33 around when I still didn’t have a real good handle on using it, I took it with me on vacation at Surf City, NC, and once again attempted to capture a sunrise. At this point, I didn’t actually have the Bear Rocks photos back yet, so I still didn’t know what to expect.
It’s not that these photos are bad. They’re fine. It’s that I wasted six (SIX!) rolls of 120 Portra 400 for seven mediocre images. That hurts, but it’s part of the learning process. I ran when I should have walked, and I paid for it.
At least some of the clouds look lovely, and I do like the shot of the man with his dog.
I sort of regret selling my old SX-70. It was the “Sonar” version, with autofocus. It was in great shape, but the scarcity and cost of SX-70 film meant it sat on the shelf gathering dust. I experimented with some of the filter and flash options available at the time, but it was never as good as it should have been. I also stand on the fact that modern Polaroid film is only acceptable to those who never experienced the original.
With a week-long beach adventure fast approaching on the calendar, I decided to break out the Minolta X-370 again and put a roll through it. I planned on taking it and a number of other as-yet-untested cameras with me to decide which I was going to keep and which I was going to part with (Spoiler alert: I only parted with one, and I regret it).
I took the camera with me to go hang out with some friends, and while I’d like to blame the soft focus on my poor vision, there may or may not have been some other factors involved.
The thing is, though, I like these shots. They are as blurry and chaotic as the evening turned out to be. Not every photo was worth sharing, but they all represent the moment perfectly, and I think that’s more important than perfect lighting and tack-sharp focus.
