Lewis What's His Name

I have no idea what I'm doing

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Cheap tat, worn antiques, and broken cameras

December 16, 2024 /

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.

Black and white image of a telegraph pole against dramatic clouds
Black and white image of a house, with a small ladder in the path to the front door. Everything is poorly exposed and foggy.
A pile of trash in an alley. The pink and green haze over the entire image obscures the objects, instead giving them a vaguely-human shape.
Black and white image of an alley, with dramatic clouds overhead
Black and white photo of a cloudy sky with bare trees in the foreground.
Black and white photo of trees against a white sky. The tree branches are also a ghostly white where the sun hits them.
Photo of a river, with islands in the near distance. Everything has an ethereal, pastel look.
Photo of a door, with the words 'smallwood hotel' written on it. There's green artifacts on the photo. The left edge has been cut short, leaving a black bar down the side.
Photo of a Chinese restaurant. Most of the details are lost to a deep pink haze.
A brick and plaster building facade. The image is badly clouded with a pink haze.

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.

A window on a green brick building. Barely readable in the window is a sign that reads 'sorry, we're stoned' in the style of a 'sorry, we're closed' sign.
Photo of a maple tree, taken at the same level as the leaves. The leaves are a variety of colours, including red, purple, yellow, and green.
Photo of a banana skin on the pavement
Photo of a pile of bones next to a cauldron. A coyote skull is in centre focus.
Photo of a street where it meets an alley. The colours are washed out and faded, giving it the look of a photograph that's faded with time.
Photo of a cityscape beneath dramatic clouds. Telegraph poles and power lines take up much of the photo. The colours are washed out and faded, or else too dark, giving it the look of a photograph that has faded with time.
Photo of a pile of bones. A plush Thor doll stands next to half a deer skull.

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.

#ShittyCameraChallenge

December 12, 2024 /

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.

A photo of a tall building, with a tree in the foreground. The sky is full of bubbles
A dramatic upward shot of a Hilton hotel. The sky is full of bubbles
Photo of a clock tower from below. It's framed by a taller building and trees. The sky is full of bubbles
Photo of the KOIN tower in Portland. It's a pinkish-orange colour. The sky is full of bubbles.
A row of bicycles and scooters on the side of a busy road

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.

Black and white photo near a bus station. A 'do not enter' sign is in centre focus
Black and white photo of a pair of shoes dangling from power lines
Black and white photo of a brick building. A giant spoon is hanging from the eaves. On the ground below is a chalkboard advertising a Greek restaurant in the basement.
Black and white photo of a house. The photo is badly fogged
Black and white photo of a sign that's been knocked sideways. It reads 'red canoe employee parking only.' The photo may have been double-exposed by accident. There are black smudges on the edges of the frame.
A black and white photo of a gate, blocking off a wooded area. The photo is badly fogged.
Black and white photo of an aeroplane flying low overhead from behind a building. It is poorly.
Black and white photo of Portland Union Station. It's poorly exposed.
Black and white photo of a large, art deco building in front of a cloudy sky.

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.

Photo of a stack of VHS tapes. There's a green coating over much of the image
Photo of a clouded sky. Trees and a cityscape are only recognisable by silhouette
Photo of a dramatic clouded sky above a grocery store. The colours are muted and grey
Photo of a quiet intersection, with a theatre on one corner. The image has skewed purple, and there's a green overlay over much of the image
Photo of a marijuana bud. The leaves around it are shades of green and purple.
Photo of a lake, with trees and a nearly-cloudless sky reflected on the water. The colours are all shades of purple and green.
Photo of a tattoo parlour at night. There's a green light on inside.
Photo of a street sign, with a pine tree behind it. The image has been badly burned by light leak.
Photo of a street sign. The colours are all shades of reds and yellows
Photo of a bunch of pigeons sitting on powerlines. The photo is shades of purples and greens.
Photo of a mock Tudor house. The colours are all shades of oranges and reds
Photo of an art deco hotel against a bright yellow sky. The entire photo has a yellow wash to it.

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.

Photo of a desk service bell. It's painted yellow, with a smiley face. It's surrounded by books and a price label maker
Photo of a pile of bones on an altar. A coyote skull is in centre focus. The entire photo is cast in UV light, giving it an eerie purple glow.
Photo of a group of road cones in front of a building. The photo is badly damaged from light leak, and the colours are all off and wrong.
Photo of a crocheted blanket, with balls of yarn in front of it. It's show with a very narrow depth of field, putting most of the photo out of focus.
Photo of a fence. It's graffitied with 'Free Baba Z'
Photo of a street lamp. The colours are all wrong, with the sky orange, and the highlights on the lamp blue.
Photo of a cow skull covered in silk flowers. The colours are all wrong, leaning toward blue.
Photo of a digger bucket. Welded into the bucket is Nutter 62"
Photo of a dirty, grimy window. Written on it are the words 'keep out,' as well as a smiley face with a very wide mouth
Photo of an old building, with a neon hotel sign. It is visibly abandoned.

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.

Photo of a scrub jay perched in a tree
Photo of several Canada geese preening and fluffing their feathers
Photo of a male house sparrow looking down at the ground. The markings on his face make him look angry
Photo of a squirrel leaping across the grass. It's backlit, allowing its thin tail to show through the fur

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.

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.

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