Month: December 2024

It’s Christmas. I hope you’re having a good one. We did our holiday on Saturday, with roast duck and a few friends over. And while crouching down to pick up an errant bit of rutabaga and toss it in the bin, I threw my back out quite spectacularly. Don’t get old, kids.

A couple days before that, I took a bunch of cameras for a walk. The results were, well. Mixed. I don’t hate any of it, but I’m not in love, either. Mostly, the weather was against me. But I still got some good stuff. I also got a lot of blurry stuff, but that’s what happens when you put 35mm film into a 127 Brownie.

I’ve sort of decided that I’m going to start leaning into the way the film warps when I do this. I’ve always cropped it out, but I’m not actually sure why. There aren’t any adapters for putting 35mm into 127 cameras, because the canister itself is too big to go into the camera. Instead, I have to respool the film onto a metal 127 spool, and load it in a dark bag. There’s nothing in the camera keeping the film straight, which lets it sort of go all wonky.

People have asked how I know to advance the frames. The answer is basically trial and error. The first roll I did like this, I hadn’t advanced the film far enough, and all the frames were overlapped. The second, I over-compensated, and lost a lot of shots to caution. Turning the knob three times on both my 127 Brownies seems to be the perfect middle ground.

I get really nice panoramas from my Sawyer’s Nomad. Funny thing about this camera is it’s a 620. I have a couple of 620 cameras, and they are all a pain in the ass. The film is exactly the same as 120, but the spools are different. So every time, I have to respool the film in order to use it. Except with this one. This is the only camera I have that can handle Lomography’s fat rolls without issue. The 35mm to 120 adapter fits with room to spare. And since I have other 620/120 cameras I like better, this camera has pretty much exclusively become a vehicle for sprocket panorama shots. The same as with the other ones, it was a bit of trial and error to work out how far to advance the frames, but one and a half turns of the knob seems to be the sweet spot.

I get much better results from these shenanigans in the summer, when the sun is blinding. Also, I’m really bad at remembering that I don’t have the entire visible frame available to me, so often the thing I was trying to photograph winds up not actually in the shot. I think next I want to put some 127 film into one of my 620/120 cameras, for some good panoramas there. Because right now, I only get 4×4″ squares from that.

The same day, I also took out my H35N out, loaded up with Lomography Metropolis. I’m incredibly not sold on this film, and I’m not sure if it doesn’t like the cheap plastic camera, or the light this time of year, or what. I’ve shot a few rolls of this though, and haven’t ever got anything I liked out of it. I’ve also heard mixed opinions from Metropolis. I’ve seen some people say that it shouldn’t be shifting colour like that, but I’m not sure what to make of the fact that half of this roll was pink, and half was blue. I’ve got a few more rolls though. So I’ll keep messing with it.

Earlier this year, I put a roll of expired HP 200 film into the Nomad. Now, this has confused me greatly, because I shot one roll in one of my Minoltas, and the photos came out brilliantly. I thought, great! This is film that I can get some good mileage out of. I was still lab developing at that time, so I sent out the roll, and got back deep fried scans that had been improperly cropped. I’d given up on it there and then, because surely they had better equipment than I do. But when I was scanning the rolls from last week’s shenanigans, I decided balls to it. Let’s scan that one as well. And

I mean. They’re not what I’d call vibrant colour, but there’s actually recognisable images on there. If anything, I think this is my favourite roll from the Nomad. Even considering I hadn’t sealed up the red window well enough.

And then as a little treat to myself, I got a Holga Micro 110. And then for some batshit insane reason, decided to test it with black and white film. I am so bad at black and white. Out of the entire roll, I got a single barely-usable image.

Perfectly sunny day. I’ve no idea why I’m so bad at black and white.

I’ve got a Lomography Four-Lens camera coming in soon as well. I can’t wait to mess about with that.

I have a lot of cameras, and none of them are ones that I think anyone would consider ‘good.’ A few are decent, but nothing really goes beyond that. The full list, as of this moment, is as follows:

• Canon EOS Elan II E (35mm)
• Canon EOS Rebel XT (dSLR)
• Fujifilm Instax Mini 90 (instant film)
• Holga 135BC (35mm)
• Holga 120 WPC Panoramic Pinhole (120)
• Holga Mini 110 (110)
• Kodak Jiffy Six-20 (620)
• Kodak Brownie Target Six-20 (620)
• Kodak Brownie Starmatic II (127)
• Kodak Brownie Starflex (127)
• Kodak Ektar H35 (35mm)
• Kodak Ektar H35N (35mm)
• Minolta Maxxum 3000i (35mm)
• Minolta Maxxum 8000i (35mm)
• Nikon Coolpix (point and shoot digital)
• Pentax MG (35mm)
• Ricoh KR-5 Super II (35mm)
• Ricohflex Mark VI (120/35mm)
• Sawyer’s Nomad 620 (120/620)
• Super Ricohflex (120/127/35mm)
• No-name handicam (digital)

Annoyingly, I know that somewhere around here I’ve got two more, but I can’t remember what they are, nor have I been able to find them. I think I mentioned last time that I want to do a full roll from each camera for the Shitty Camera Challenge, and so far I’m four down. Five if you count doing vlogs with the handicam, which I am.

I love my shit cameras though. Even the really bad ones, like that Brownie Target, and the Kodak Ektars. But you might look at this list and spot a few that are genuinely good cameras. And they all were, once upon a time. The problem with the Canon Rebel is it’s literally 20 years old, and as such the sensor is tiny, it’s banged up from being dropped multiple times, and a lot of features that are standard on newer cameras aren’t even possible with this one. I need to shoot video? Why do you think I got the handicam?

The Ricoh and Pentax cameras are similar. I know they were both good cameras when they were new, and aside from topping out at around 1600 ISO, they’re just as good as any other SLR in the same range today. The problem with mine is I got them both from an antique shop. The same antique shop, in fact, from the same vendor. I don’t know who this person is, but their cameras all suck. They’re all broken and need to be wrangled into working through force. I do find it funny that on both, the shutter timer is so wrecked that it can prevent the shutter from working entirely. Whatever this person did, they must have really relied on that timer a bit too much. But that’s just one of their many problems. The Ricoh’s shutter is wholly inconsistent to begin with, and won’t always fire at the speed it’s set to. It has an internal light meter, which doesn’t know what light is, and the gears on the film advance are prone to slipping, resulting in frames that overlap into weird double exposures.

The Pentax isn’t much better. It has no rewind lever, so I can only unload it in a dark bag, the film advance gears slip, the shutter button fell off while I was testing it out with a remote shutter cable (test result: fail), and sometimes the shutter will just fire whenever it feels like. A new problem it’s developed is the back door springing wide open randomly, which it didn’t do when I bought it. This seems to be a new problem from when I got hit by a car last month. I had the Pentax in my bag at the time, which is what I fell on when the car that clipped me with a wing mirror sped away. So, that’s fun. It’s caught me off-guard now a few times, and is going to need a piece of tape going forward.

But if I hated any of this, I wouldn’t have bought them in the first place since I saw right there in the shop that they had the problem with the shutter timer. And at $30 each, it was hard to pass them up.

Often, my favourite photos aren’t the ones that look the best. I prefer the ones that are interesting. Usually, this means something has gone wrong. Occasionally, it’s because I did actually manage to take a good photo. But a lot of my ‘good’ photos don’t have much going on in them. They look good because the lighting was even, the film was a stock that’s been around forever, or I was actually trying to get a photo of a bird in clear focus for my field book.

Outside of a few rules I like to follow, like slower film fixed lens cameras, or using certain cameras for loading 35mm to get panoramas, I don’t really care what I do. Or rather, I do care, as long as I have a bit of control over what comes out. This is why I wound up disliking Harman Phoenix so much. Nothing I did got consistent results, even in my cameras that are ostensibly good. So I souped that shit, so the total lack of latitude was obscured by green and pink gunk all over the place.

Anyone who’s ever used a Holga knows that the appeal is because they’re awful. Brownies are a meme for how bad they are. And there are far better instant cameras out there than the Instax Mini 90. And yet, these are consistently some of my favourite cameras to use. My list of favourites seems to change month by month. Only the point and shoots masquerading as SLRs annoy me, because they don’t give you much control. I don’t have control with the Brownies, but that’s why I like them. If I’m shooting an SLR, I want to at least have some say in what ISO I shoot at, or my shutter speed. So with three cameras like that, I’m going to go through at least six batteries in order to get them knocked off my list.

Curious to see photos I’ve not uploaded here, or to Bluesky? You can browse my gallery by camera, film stock, or see everything all mixed up together.

I learned about this challenge late last month, and immediately decided to do it. It’s straight up my alley, because it is my entire philosophy toward photography. All of my cameras are on a spectrum of shit, with a few outright shitboxes in the mix.

I even got myself a new one, out of practicality more than anything. I grabbed myself the Holga Micro-110, because the CamerHack film cutter I bought for my 127 cameras creates 110 film as a byproduct. I keep throwing out perfectly good film as a result, but I will need to find myself a re-loadable cartridge and a dev reel now. Apparently you can get them 3D printed, but I’m also not sure if the Holga will work with un-perforated film. There’s only one way to find out, I suppose. Either way, I’m going to at least need to get the reel, since past attempts to develop 110 off-cuts with the ‘spaghetti’ method have been abysmal. Also, I have no idea how to store the negatives, so I’m going to need to look into that.

I went into Portland a bit more often than usual this year. Most of my photos from these trips had issues either in exposure or development. This roll suffered from some wash contamination in the dev solution, and instead of being developed in liquid, it got developed in foam. The result is the bubbles that appear in the light parts of the photos.

I’ve been getting into black and white recently, and I am not good at it. I got one good roll by what feels like chance, and then all the rest have been consistently terrible. I’m using Cinestill’s dev kit, but I want to try something else just to make sure it’s not entirely a me issue. But that also doesn’t explain why the first one I did where I know I hadn’t got the temperature right is somehow the best.

I’ve been doing a lot of experimental photography as well this year. I’ve redscaled some rolls, souped some, and have been playing with cross processing. I want to try to develop some in slide film chemicals, but I don’t have any yet. I do like the bleach bypass process the most so far.

I’ve also fallen in love with odd film stocks this year. I think Lomography Turquoise might be my favourite, with Cinestill 800T shot in daylight a close second.

I’ve still got the ancient-ass Canon Rebel, and mostly use it for shooting animals. It’s busted and wonky, but it’s still the only one of the lot that puts out consistent quality.

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I start classes next month, and I seem to have everything sorted out for that. The only thing I need now are my books, which I technically don’t even need because I can just get the eBooks from the university’s website. But I would rather have physical books so I can write in them and keep better notes. Most of my classes from last time transferred over, so I should have enough federal aid left to finish.

I’m going with the ‘get all the boring shit out of the way first’ approach, and apparently I didn’t do well in maths last time, because I still have to do that shit. I’m so bad at numbers and shit. It’s going to kill me.

Luckily, this university does half-semesters, so I’m only doing two classes per eight-week term. I won’t be overloaded with a bunch of other classes, and decided to take intro to Anthropology alongside it so I have something easy next to it. This maths class, and some online literacy class are the only ones I have to take that I 800% do not want to do. I was looking at the syllabus for the online literacy one, and it’s very much geared at people who have no idea how to use the internet beyond posting to tiktok. It doesn’t seem like there’s any way out of it, either. Bleh. Oh well. I’m taking that one next section, so after that it’s only classes I actually want to take.

I’m also going to see how many independent study classes I can get away with taking, since the options offered by the university are pretty good, but not amazing. From the looks of it, there are going to be some gaps I’d like to fill, but again, that’s a bridge to burn when we get to it.