Epiphanies!

I’m getting ready to go on vacation in a few weeks, so I’m doing the annual “Drag out all the film and cameras and decide what the hell we want to take.” It takes a while, primarily because we’re shooting 620 and 127 and 4×5 film in addition to regular 120 and 35mm, so there’s a lot of respooling and such that needs to happen. I’ve got 20 rolls of 620 film respooled so far. So far! I’m also working on breaking down rolls of 220 into 120 and 620 rolls. It seems like I always find 220 film cheaper than 120, so I buy it instead, but it does require more work to use in almost all of my cameras. The one camera I have that takes 220 film? The Bronica? Yeah, I’m not taking that. It’s too big and heavy.

So, I’m working on getting the film sorted, and I’ve got the line-up of cameras that we’re thinking about taking. There’s about 10. Or maybe 12. Film cameras, anyway, we’ll also have our digital cameras and the phone cameras too. Can you say “overkill”? Because apparently I can’t.

I’m taking an 8×10 wooden pinhole camera, this one here, because we’re going out west, Way Out West, way farther than I’ve ever been before (America: It is large), and I’ll be damned if I have a camera that shoots 8×10 film and not take it with me this trip. Even if it’s big and heavy. And weighs about a bazillion pounds.

So I’ll have that pinhole camera, but I was also considering taking the 4×5 Bollywood pinhole camera, too. I was all, “Eh,” but then decided I should take some pictures with it just to be sure that I was okay leaving it at home.

Nope. It’s coming with. I love that stupid camera. At least I can store it inside the big-ass 8×10 camera.

Then I had the thought that, hey, since I’ll be taking the 4×5 pinhole camera anyway, I can try shooting some of the 4×5 Kodak High Speed Infrared film I have stashed away. Large format infrared pinhole! Woot! That’s something I have tried before, but with Efke’s IR 820 film. I was using an IR 720 filter, one of the ones that is so dark that it’s basically opaque to the human eye. Anyway, a 15 minute exposure time wasn’t long enough to produce an image, and I didn’t want to waste all my large format infrared film trying, so I gave it up. But, the Kodak HIE only requires a lighter red 25 filter, and most people seem to rate it at around ASA 125-200 with the filter, so I might be okay with my regular exposure time? I’ll probably extend it by a few seconds, just to be sure. Anyway, I’ve got enough of the HIE that I can take a few test shots before I go and see what it’s doing.

But, what do I do about a filter? I ordered a couple more step rings today so that if I need to, I can always glue a step ring to the pinhole camera and screw on my regular 52mm red 25 filter. However, I remembered that a few months ago, I ordered a set of film gels (kind of like these) that I thought might come in handy for camera stuff. The gel red looks close enough to the red 25 filter, so I figured I can cut some squares of it to tape over the pinhole when I need them.

Good enough. But then, it suddenly occurred to me that I can be using these gels in my other cameras, too.

Here’s the thing – I’ve got a lot of weirdo 35mm film. However, 35mm is my least favorite format to shoot. I’ll be taking my Nikon FM2N that is outfitted with the Lensbaby lens so I can shoot weird, Lensbaby photos using stuff like color infrared film. And I can always respool 35mm onto 127 and 120 backing paper and run that through my other cameras to get sprocket hole pictures. However, if I want to shoot respooled infrared, I was stuck using my TLR cameras, since I can get filters on those lenses. I can’t get filters on the front of my Savoy, though.

The problem with shooting respooled 35mm film in a TLR is that the sprocket holes will be on the sides of the photo, instead of on the top and the bottom. I prefer to shoot respooled 35mm film in side scrolling cameras, like the Savoy. And now, I realize, I have a way to use filters in those cameras and can shoot the weird, funky infrared respooled 35mm films, too.

All I’ve got to do is tape a small piece of the gel filter on the inside of the camera, and I’m all set to go!

My only qualm is if the plastic cameras will be infrared proof enough to not fog the film, and frankly, there’s no way for me to know that until I try it out. I know people shoot infrared with Holgas, and I think my Savoy, at least, would block light better than one of those. I’ll just have to see what happens. My plan is to just tape small pieces of gel to the camera as needed, and then remove them when I switch rolls. Then I thought that I could work on taping all the pieces of gel back to each other like a big mosaic, and maybe make a crazy flash cover out all the different color pieces! I am insane!

Since I was messing with the filters, anyway, I had the random thought to try shooting my Nikon D40 digital camera with my super-dark IR 720 filter over it.

I didn’t really expect anything, because I always had the vague notion that in order to shoot digital infrared photography, you had to disable some sort of infrared filter inside your camera. I don’t know. It never really interested me enough to find out anything about it. But, when I saw how the photos were coming out, I saw there was some potential.

Threw the picture into Photoshop, and converted it to black and white using Black and White>Lighten.

How about that? It’s almost there. Some magic with the levels…

…reveals the finished picture:

Not too bad, considering it was shot with a digital camera. Here’s another one.

Before:

After:

Interestingly, the shutter speed didn’t seem to affect much. The first photo of the Dodge Dart had a one second exposure time, and the photo of the van was hand held and only had a 1/30 second exposure time. Weird. I was especially pleased with how dark the sky looked, considering that the sky was a hazy near-white when I took the photos.

I’ll probably shoot more using infrared film, but it’s nice to know that if we don’t happen to have any infrared film loaded up, that I can approximate the infrared effect with my digital camera. Here’s hoping that it doesn’t poop out on me and break during this vacation like it did last year.

Adventures in 75mm

Last summer, we picked up a couple of Speed Graphic bodies that needed lenses. One was a 4×5 Speed Graphic, so it wasn’t any big deal to pop a lens into that and make it a usable camera, but the other was a 3×4 Speed Graphic, and it was missing both lens and lensboard.

3×4 isn’t a real common film size anymore. Most people who want big negatives either deal with 120 film now, or jump up to 4×5 sheet film. However, there were a lot of nice cameras made to use 3×4 film in the first half of the last century, and it seems a shame to let those cameras go to waste. So, we purchased some 3×4 film – you can still buy it fresh from Freestyle – and started using our 3×4 cameras. Up until a few months ago, all of the Graflex SLRs we had used 3×4 film (now we have two that use 4×5), so we shot with 3×4 quite a bit.

But because 3×4 has fallen out of popularity, it can be difficult to find parts for 3×4 cameras, such as the lensboard, which we needed before we could use the Speed Graphic. I finally tracked one down from Midwest Photo. It fit the camera just fine, but unfortunately had a huge hole drilled out for the lens. I’ve got a healthy amount of misc. large format lenses stockpiled, but only one that I could fit on this lensboard.

But, it fit, so hooray! At least, hooray until I actually looked through the ground glass and tried to focus on something. Anything. And then I realized, well, crap. The lens I had put on this camera was a 75mm lens.

See, here’s the thing. Lenses are confusing. At least, they confuse me. And I’ve had this problem before – when I purchased my first Speed Graphic 4×5 camera, it was outfitted with a (different) 75mm lens. This meant that if I was focused at infinity and shot a picture, I’d get crazy heavy vignetting in the corners, like this, but worse:

As a comparison, the Yashicas I have that shoot 120 film are outfitted with an 80mm lens. An 80 mm lens covers an area slightly larger than a 2.25″ square when focused at infinity. So, to cover the entire film plane when focused at infinity for a sheet of 4×5 film, I need to use a bigger lens, like the 135mm lens I now have on that Speed Graphic. And to cover an entire film plane for a sheet of 3×4 film, I probably really need to use a lens around 127mm.

That being said, a smaller lens like the 75mm can be useful for macro photography. That’s what I discovered when shooting my first photos with the Speed Graphic 4×5 camera.

I shot that picture with Domo about an inch or so away from the camera lens.

But anyway, back to the 3×4 Speed Graphic I was working with yesterday. I had the 75mm lens installed in it, and it did look really nice, so I figured what the hell, and decided to take some test photos using orthographic film, so I could see how the camera worked. I wanted to use orthographic film instead of regular black and white film because orthographic film can be developed in paper developer in trays under a safelight, and I didn’t want to deal with getting all of my other film processing chems and equipment out. I have a bunch of Kodak Electron Image film in 3×4 size. It was originally sold for scientific purposes, but works just fine in regular cameras as long as you account for how slow it is (I’ve been rating it at ISO 12).

I loaded the film under a red safelight. However, I may have had the film just a wee bit too close to the safelight, because I got some weird fogging and such on the film. I’m going to try loading some more film in the dark and testing it again to see if I get the same effect or not. Of course, there are so many different variables at play, including the fact that my chems were probably hot since my house is hot, but I’d like to narrow it down just to make sure that the camera isn’t light leaky.

For some reason – I think because I had the camera on a tripod, and was more than a few inches away from what I was shooting – I had a really difficult time focusing. I’d get it close, but it still looked weird on the ground glass. And even though I was shooting in sunlight, because of the slow film, I had to have the aperture wide open on the lens, which decreases the depth of field. And also because of the slow film, I had to use slower shutter speeds. The shutter the lens is mounted on isn’t a bad one, but like a lot of old shutters, the slow speeds can be iffy. So, I depended on the curtain shutter inside the Speed Graphic, which, happily, is a workhorse. Here are some of the pictures shot with this camera/lens combo:

I made some contact prints later with the negatives. You can see I still got vignetting in the corners.

Speaking of contact prints, I made the prints using some old (1970s, I think?) FSC contact paper. It was included in the big lot of photo paper I bought off ebay a few months back, and I hadn’t tried it out until yesterday. The paper is 8×10, so I just cut it down to use on my small contact printer. The results are awesome. In photos that were actually sharp and not dreamy-blurry like the 3×4 Speed Graphic pics, I got sharp lines, bright whites, deep blacks, and a rich brown tone:

That picture was shot with a 4×5 Speed Graphic I was testing out yesterday, too. It’s one I picked up at an auction a few weeks ago. It worked better than expected, but I want to try shooting some color film through it and testing out the roll film back before it goes on Etsy.

But anyway, back to the 3×4 Speed Graphic. The first photo I shot with it was of an old Kodak Timer. When I was developing the negative, I was bummed because the negative looked all fogged and low contrasty. However, I made the contact print anyway, and I think it turned out to be my favorite photo that I shot yesterday.

So, yeah, I may have fogged the film somewhat, and put the wrong size lens on the camera, but I kind of don’t care at all, because that is awesome.

Before I tested it out, I was thinking that I’d just wind up selling the 3×4 Speed Graphic – like I said, if we’re shooting 3×4 film, we’re probably using a Graflex SLR. But now, I don’t know. The 3×4 Speed Graphic with the wrong lens may have suddenly morphed into my own personal Pretentious Art Camera. It may be a keeper.

Things I’ve done lately!

1. Inventoried all of our large format film. We have an embarrassingly large amount of it. However, now I am inspired to go shoot a bunch of large format photos! Also, I seriously need an 8×10 camera. I’ve been stockpiling 8×10 film whenever I can find it cheap in advance of the day when I get an 8×10 camera. I also now have a good 8×10 film holder (those are expensive!). All I need now is a camera! I’d love to get some type of crazy Ansel Adam-esque view camera, but I’m not sure how likely that is to happen. At least there’s always pinholes! I tried to construct one out of some boxes a few nights ago, but it wasn’t sturdy enough. I’ll have to build one out of wood. Mmm, power tools and sawdust…

2. I’ve been making some contact prints. I own two contact printers, one that can produce prints up to 4×5, and another that does prints up to 5×7. I always think I should get rid of one, but I wind up using both, so they’re staying. It’s gotten hot outside, and I don’t have central air. In the summertime, the bathroom where I do my darkroom stuff can make me claustrophobic if I’m in it with a bunch of stuff for a long time (the enlarger, it is huge), so it’s nice to just use a contact printer and some small trays to make prints.

The photo above is a contact print from one of the shots I took using Watson, the 5×7 camera. It was shot using the Fuji X-ray film. Since I can only scan in about 1/3 of a 5×7 negative, I’ve got to make contact prints to see what the photos actually look like. What’s nice about using the X-ray film is that I can develop it in paper developer, so if I develop a batch of the X-ray film in trays, I can just leave the chems out in trays for a few hours until the negatives dry, and then make my contact prints without having to set up my darkroom stuff again.

I used some old Ansco Indiatone Kashmir White paper that expired in 1952 to make the print. It was the first time I had tried out that paper, and I really love it. It has a pebbled matte finish, and a gorgeous brown tone to it. Lush! Fortunately, I have a big box of it left.

3. I also experimented some with making photograms. Photograms are made by placing an object directly onto photo paper and exposing it to light. Lumen prints are technically photograms, but are exposed with sunlight and aren’t put into developer. This photogram was made by placing some nightshade (I think) plants onto the contact printer, and then placing a sheet of Kodak Medalist paper on top of that and exposing for about 5 seconds or so.

4. I’ve also been trying out some contact prints on the Kodak Studio Proof paper I have. This is the type of paper professional photographers would use to make proof prints of photos to show people. You sandwich a negative on top of the paper, expose it to sunlight, and the paper makes an image without putting it into developer. Photographers would then give these to their customers, but since the paper wasn’t fixed at all, within a few weeks, the images would fade. Sneaky, but a way to insure that people would order prints instead of just keeping the proofs.

I didn’t have any idea how long it would take for the image to develop on the paper, so the first print I did, I left in the sun for about an hour. When I took it back inside, I saw that the image had been out there for so long that part of it has solarized and made the photo look extra apocalypse-y.

I made some more prints, varying the times on them. Here’s the difference between exposing an image for 5 minutes versus 10 minutes.

The five minute exposure is on top. The ten minute exposure is on the bottom, and you can see where it is starting to get all solarize-y. These prints were scanned in before I fixed them, and after fixing and drying, the color has changed somewhat. They’re more of a reddish brown tone instead of a bright pinky red, and the areas that solarized have mainly just turned really dark, which is kind of a bummer. Still, a useful paper, especially when I want to make quicky proofs of large format negatives without having to mix up a bunch of chems.

I was up to some more Photographic! Fun! Times! yesterday, but I’ll go ahead and do a new post for that, since this one doesn’t need to be epically long.

Found Friday – Tiny Ties Edition

Just one pic for Found Friday today, but it’s a good one. I bought a stack of old photos at an antique mall this winter, but mixed in with all of the prints was this one 4×5 negative that had absolutely nothing to do with any of the other photos. These four guys are full of awesome, from the high waisted pants to the tiny ties, to the straw hats, to the corncob pipe(!) So. Much. Win. It looks like they’re standing in front of some gas pumps, but I definitely got the same feeling Katie did (on Flickr), where it looks like these guys were getting ready to head on down to the track.

In other news, Travis and I survived the big camera auction, although our bank account may disagree with that. We scored some things that rock:

And some things that made us go “What the hell were we thinking?!!!” as soon as we won our bids. Travis is kicking himself for spending more than he wanted on a military 4×5 Speed Graphic camera, although I had absolutely no problem with what he spent on it – I mean, it’s a working 4×5 camera. How wrong can you go? That doesn’t compare at all to my auction shame.

I only spent $30 on it, which isn’t that much money to piss away in the wind, if one were so inclined. (I have, on occasion, been so inclined). However… this?

Oh, it may look like some sort of gigantic monster camera, but it’s not. It’s really an albatross. (Obligatory link to Monty Python here). Sure, it only cost $30, but how much will it cost my SOUL to have this in my life now??!!

First of all, it weighs roughly 14,000 pounds. Secondly, it somehow weighs more when the camera is taken out of the case – it’s like the anti-Tardis. Thirdly, it probably is a roll film camera (I’m guessing for 70mm film), but it’s definitely unusable, since I don’t have a roll film holder for it, or power cords, or an instruction manual. Fourthly, I thought maybe I could just tear it all down and scavenge cool parts and lenses from it, but no, I can’t, because the inside of the camera looks deadly, like it wants to kill you so, so much. Fifthly, I can’t even try to sell it, because, again, it weighs 14,000 pounds, and I can’t even comprehend what kind of postage that would cost.

But it does have some fun buttons and switches, so it has that going for it. /sobs

Found Friday – Psychedelic Edition

A month or so ago, we picked up another pink Hawkeye Flashfun, 1. Because those cameras are awesome, and 2. Because it had a partially exposed roll of film inside. I am incapable of passing one up. Anyway, we shot the last few remaining pics on the roll and then developed it. The film was Kodacolor-X, which is process C-22, but no worries – we just developed it in cold C-41 chems instead.

The found pics were taken out west, at Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone. The picture above is of Grotto Geyser in Yellowstone, which tends to erupt about once every 8 hours. It is apparently also related to Grotto Fountain Geyser, Spa Geyser, Rocket Geyser (my favorite!), and Giant Geyser.

The pictures we shot on this roll of film didn’t come out so well.

You can kind of make out an Amish buggy at the bottom of the photo, underneath all of the shrooms and LSD.

Big day today! Going to hopefully buy an epic amount of photography goodness at an auction! Wish me luck!

Found Friday – Serendipity Edition

We’re going camping next weekend! Yay! It’s going to be out first camping trip of the year, at Indian Lake State Park, which we’ve never been to before. I’m looking forward to going, though, and breaking out the camper for the first time since last fall. And hey, since we have an air conditioner in it, it won’t even matter if the weather is all hot and crappy!

We bought a new pop-up camper last year right before we went on vacation, which also happened to be right before the next year’s camper models came out. We bought the last one they had in stock of a current year model, and told the dealership specifically, in very clear terms, that we did not want an air conditioner – we always go camping when it’s cool outside, so we didn’t need one, or want to pay the $1800 charge, or whatever it was, for the AC and installation. We come back a week later to find our brand new camper waiting for us in the parking lot, with a brand new air conditioner installed on it. Um… what? Turns out someone screwed up and installed it anyway, and since you can’t exactly uninstall one once it’s put in – they have to cut a big hole in the roof to install it – and we refused to pay for it, since we didn’t want it anyway, we got the AC for free.

And honestly, the AC works great! It’s awesome! I’m all about going camping in the summer now! Screw it, we can just do outside stuff in the early morning and then again in the evening, and stay inside the camper and play Boggle or something when it’s 12,000 degrees outside. Free AC for the win!

Anyway, the reason I mentioned the camping trip is that last weekend, Travis and I went to an auction. It was an auction of the contents of a house owned by a guy who had recently moved, I think, into an assisted care facility. Turns out the guy worked at least part time as a professional photographer, and we scored a bunch of great items, including a few cameras, lenses, books, and a huge amount of old negatives and slides. Huge. I probably have at least 1,000 4×5 negatives shot by this guy, not to mention the smaller format ones and the slides. It’s going to be too much for me to go through, so I put some of them up in the shop. I started going through the negatives, put have only begun to make a dent in the collection.

I was startled, however, when I pulled a sleeve of negatives out from the box that was labelled “Vacation ~ Dad & Mom R At Indian Lake.” The photos were taken (or developed, maybe) on August 6, 1955. And now, 56 years later, I’ve got the opportunity to go to Indian Lake and shoot some pictures with what I’m assuming is the same camera that shot these photos originally (a 4×5 Speed Graphic, which we also bought at the auction).

It looks like they stayed in a cabin, though, so it won’t be exactly the same. But still, kind of awesome nonetheless.

Found Friday – Gold Rush edition

Hey! It’s been a while! I got sick right after my last post (blerg), so I didn’t get a chance to try what I wanted to try with my RA-4 chems. It’ll just have to wait until next time I do some color embiggening. Meanwhile, we’ve been developing some black and white and color film lately, so I do have some new found stuff to share.

One of the more interesting rolls of found film that we’ve come across lately is this roll of Super XX Pan 620 film. It showed up in a random ebay lot, so I have no idea who shot this or what camera it came from, but the photos on it rock. About half were shot in a cemetary.

And the other half were taken in town. Looks like there was some kind of party going on.

By blowing up part of the first photo, I was able to follow the road signs in the atlas and find out that that photo was shot in Central City, Colorado.

According to Wiki, Central City used to be known as “the richest square mile on Earth,” due to its proximity to the Pike’s Peak gold rush. This was one of those little Deadwood-esque mining towns – it aspired to great things – it even has an opera house! – but fell on hard times once the mining boom subsided. It’s now trying to bring back tourism via casinos. There’s a link on the city website to a “Gambling Horoscope.” So, you know, at least they’ve got that going for them.

More adventures with RA-4

It took me a while to drag myself away from playing Dragon Age II, but I finally shoved the enlarger back into the bathroom and mixed up some fresh RA-4 chems to make color prints. This time I was going to be using a fresh pack of paper, some Fujifilm Crystal Archive Lustre paper that I got from Freestyle a few months back.

The past few times I’ve tried to make color prints have been frustrating, due to using old paper and getting odd color tints in the base. I figured this would be a test – if I couldn’t manage to get a decent print using brand new paper and fresh chems, then I must be a lost cause.

I picked the negative above for my first test. There was a white background and bright colors so that I could easily tell how accurate my guesses on the enlarger filtration were. I did some test strips until I got bored with doing that – 3 test strips per image seem to be about my limit before I finally say, “Screw it, I’m just going to go ahead and make a print,” even if I still need to adjust my filters. 4 prints later I had the print above.

It’s not bad. I could probably tweak it a little more to get a clearer white, but I was actually pretty happy with the colors I go. My main issue was the slight cyan cast and the weird cyan splotchy bits in the upper right corner.

My next print had the cyan splotchiness in the corner, too.

I couldn’t figure out what could be causing this. Maybe a defect in the paper? I started drying out my tank more thoroughly between prints, and as an afterthought checked my rotator base for the tank. It was a little bit off level, so I adjusted it so that the tank sat perfectly level when it rotated.

That actually seemed to do the trick, amazingly. After I leveled out the base, I got a lot less noticeable cyan weirdness on my prints. Hooray!

Anyway, I’ve been experimenting making prints with all sorts of negatives. The Krispy Kreme picture is from a cross processed negative. The waterfall pic is from a newly shot roll of way expired color negative film. Then I remembered there was something I had wanted to try, and dug out that reclaimed Polaroid negative I had salvaged from the goop of a Fuji FP-100C peel-apart photo. The negative looks like this:

And one of the enlargements of that negative turned out like this:

Weird! And awesome!

I made several enlargements of the leaf photo shot with the Graflex SLR:

Including one with the texture fabric over it. Not too keen on how this turned out, but it was interesting to see how the texture worked on a color photo.

It continues to amaze me how good these prints look “in real life,” you know, as opposed to scanned in on a computer screen. The detail and sharpness in the leaf print is pretty impressive. That was shot using 3×4 film, so I was working with a pretty huge negative. The detail is kind of phenomenal.

Travis went through some of our old photos from about 10 years ago, and picked out a 35mm negative that we had developed at Walmart or CVS or some place like that. We decided to try enlarging that to see how close we came to the actual photo we got developed back then.

We came pretty close. Ours is a little more yellow and not quite as blue, but the aspen trunks are white and Toby is red, so that’s all I really cared about.

It was pretty refreshing to be working with paper that actually reacted the way it should. I made a bunch more prints that I haven’t scanned in yet, and some are even successful enough that I’m probably going to put them up in the shop. I know! Bold move! I just need to make sure I can ship prints safely without them getting all bent up. I’ll probably have to cut up chunks of cardboard for protection. I can haz box cutter?

One of the things I tried today that came out absolutely stunning was when I enlarged a black and white negative onto color paper. So, stay tuned for when I get pics uploaded of that goodness (or, just check out the shop tomorrow, because when I pulled the print out of the tank, I was all, “Oh hey! This may actually be art!” Surprise!).

Now that I kind of know what I’m doing with the color printing, I’m having a great time with it. I actually like it better than black and white printing, at least for right now. The whole process is so fast, and the amount of variables is huge, in a good way. For example, I exposed two prints exactly the same, same negative, same filtration, same time, etc, and they came out different. Why? I guess because the temps of my chems wasn’t stable, and I had to develop my prints for slightly different times. But that kind of stuff doesn’t bug me, I just accept it and welcome it as Darkroom Magic. I really like the process of making a print, and then tweaking it slightly – bumping up a filter by 5, or slightly shortening the development time, stuff like that, and then assessing the different results.

Tomorrow I’m going to try two different, older papers. One is just regular RA-4 paper, but 11×14. The other is 8×10 Fujichrome paper, which is supposed to be used for making prints from slides. It uses different chems and a different process than RA-4. That process is called R-3, and looks really similar to how slide film is developed – there’s a first developer, and then the paper is exposed to light, and then there is a color developer and blix step after that. My theory is that if slide film can be cross processed in color negative chemicals, then maybe positive paper can be cross processed in color paper chems. Maybe? Surely someone has tried this, but I couldn’t really find any info about it, so I’m just going to give it a go myself. If nothing else, I would think the Fujichrome paper could potentially be processed by developing in black and white paper first, then exposing to light, and then finished up by doing an RA-4 process. If the cross processing in RA-4 chems doesn’t work, I’ll have to try that.

Found Friday – I Smell Bacon Edition

This winter has been interminable. It is making me edgy. It’s April, for god’s sake, and there’s still snow in the forecast. It’s not like I live in freaking Banff!

Travis did some Diafine developing earlier this week, and one of the things he developed was a roll of Verichrome Pan 620 found inside the cute mint green Valiant “620.” What sort of pictures could this roll of film hold? Adorable puppies and rainbows? Cupcakes? No, of course not. What we got were pictures of an old fashioned hog butcherin’.

Yes, I know, I eat meat, hogs have to be killed somehow, to everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn, but still – really? Of all the things to take pictures with using this adorable minty green camera, this is what the photographer chooses?

There were a couple of horse pictures on the roll too. Whatever. Too little, too late, Valiant “620.”

I’m so sick of winter.

Found Friday – Fishin’ (not fission) Edition

Hey, it’s actually gorgeous out outside! Hooray! I have the windows open and everything! Of course, my big plan for today was to try and make some prints on the new photo paper, but maybe I’ll just change my plan to try doing lumen prints instead.

Here are a few more slides from the batch I got from Terry. They were in a carrier labeled Canada 1966. There are some provincial parks in Canada that sound incredible, and are places that you either have to fly or boat into. We’ve always wanted to go to one of those.

I don’t know what kind of fish that is, but I bet if it could say one thing, it would be, “Ow!”