Headed South for the holidays. Yesterday, today and tomorrow were and will be long travel days.Drove through a blizzard in PA this morning. Just awful conditions on I-81; blowing snow, white out and slippery road conditions. Trucks roared by me (I was following the reduced speed limit warnings) as if it were a sunny day and I was holding them up. Passed numerous cars off the road. What a difference 400 miles further South makes. In NC it is 57F and sunny. My kind of weather.
Thursday, December 7, 2023
Tuesday, December 5, 2023
On A Walk
Yesterday the weather finally broke enough to be able to take a walk. I woke up to a light coating of snow on the lawn but the temperature moderate later in the morning and it all went away with the rain that followed. Reports from friends in NH noted 5-8" of wet heavy snow.
Sunday, December 3, 2023
Keep forgetting
I keep forgetting to make an entry here. Sheesh! Must be that holiday time of year. I have been focussing so hard on trying to, no- willing, to make the $25 Minolta XD5 35mm eBay film camera work, that I have done so at the expense of everything else. But it has paid off. I finally figured out that it will work and I can get acceptable results developing the film so that I can take it with me on my trip south for Christmas. I guess I should have read all the manuals at the beginning, but then I am a visual, trial and error kind of guy.
Friday, December 1, 2023
Totally Absent
Have neglected posting lately. Been focusing on learning how to use a new camera. The first roll I shot with my new to me Minolta XD5 was utter failure. The film didn't stay attached on the take-up reel so I spent 3 hours shooting photos that would never be. All that time and chemistry wasted. Yesterday I repeated the process shooting and developing another roll. Here is one picture from that roll.
Monday, November 27, 2023
Dissapointment
I was so disappointed by that last roll of film so I went for a long walk yesterday and shot another roll of my old standby Ilford HP5. Tried some different metering techniques with the app on my phone, using both incident and reflective light readings. When I got back I developed the roll. After dinner, when the negatives were dry I scanned them. The metering app is ok but not sure that it is the solution. I will probably have to invest in a proper meter. Going to try a roll today with an analog meter made by Sekonic and see if that works any better.
Sunday, November 26, 2023
Another from the Roll
Finding a few marginally better photos from a roll of FOMAPAN Creative 200, medium format film that I shot. In researching this on line, I think the time I used to develop the film was possible. The developer was probably much cooler than the 72 degrees than I estimated. It was more like 68 degrees or cooler which would have extend the developing time by 1min 45sec. So I will work on making sure that I consider the temperature of the developer a little more accurately. Also reading the spec. on the fill I probably should have rinsed it a little longer. Live and learn.
Here's today's post-
Saturday, November 25, 2023
Roll of film trashed
That's right.... I loaded a perfectly good roll of film into my lab-box to develop it and lost the whole thing. I forgot to open the film chamber of the lab-box. So when I stripped the backing paper off of the film, none of the film went into the light tight chamber. The complete roll of film was exposed to light when I opened the box to attached the film lead to the take up reel. So bummed to see all of the film come popping out like a jack in the box when I opened the lid. Disappointed also because there were what I hoped would be some very good photos.
With everything all set up to develop film and nothing to develop, I put a new roll of film into the camera (Yashica Mat 124) and headed down to the beach and hurriedly shot the roll. I developed that properly this time. You can see the results in today's Instagram post. Spoiler alert.. disappointed in that too!
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