out of the 36 exposures I took on my recent roll of film, only some of them I thought turned out to my liking; I've posted eight of them in the past three posts. one thing I rarely saw when looking at other peoples' photos are the shots that didn't work out in some way or another, so I want to show a few of mine separately. photos under the cut
I got a new old point-and-shoot camera, the Kodak VR35 K300 from the 80s, and I've just gotten a new roll of film developed! this time it was a Kodak Gold 200 roll of 24 exposures. a greater proportion turned out lovely this time, but like last time I wanna go through some of the shots that sucked. photos under the cut
and now for some Ultramax 400 photos! I loaded this roll of 24 exposures up specifically for my short trip to NYC, and then I flew back home to Vancouver with about half of the roll left. bonus photos under the cut
general remarks
a lot of my scans came back looking soooo green to me, and a few of them looked weirdly brown. I used a different lab I haven't been to before now that I'm in Vancouver and not in Philly, and I think it's the colour correction that they do that isn't quite correct. I'm planning on getting the film scanned again, probably with the lab back in Philly; I would do it myself, but they gave the negatives back to me completely uncut in a big roll?? and I don't think the scanners at the library could handle that.
the VR35 has three aperture settings for ISO 100, 200, and 400. I've finally bothered to go look it up, and some questionable sites have informed me that the largest aperture is f/5.6, so I'm guessing the other two are f/8 and f/11. the same sources tell me that the shutter speed is 1/125 s, so the aperture settings are I believe one stop above the sunny 16 rule, which seems reasonable. for indoor shots where I knew there wasn't going to be enough light, I shot at the largest aperture, which apparently is an exposure value of 12 or so, but unfortunately apparently interiors are at 6 or so. therefore...
still too dark
I think deep down I knew this one wouldn't turn out well, but I had hoped using ISO 400 film and opening my aperture as wide as possible would make it work, and I was still disappointed when it didn't lol. the one on the left is the shot from the camera, and the one on the right was the shot I took with my phone1. I've played around with the curves and whatnot, but it just wasn't really salvageable to me. and look at how green it is! I like how spooky that hue makes it, as opposed to all the outdoor shots that now look kinda cold, but I really wish the people on the other side showed up better.
at this point it's got me wondering whether I should get a real camera and not just use a point-and-shoot for everything. I think the only way I could've gotten this shot to work was to slow the shutter speed to let enough light in, but I don't have control over that on the camera I have. but then I would have to learn to guesstimate the apertures and shutter speeds for the amount of light and film speed I have, and I'd rather not do math while taking photos...
here's another underexposed shot; in case you can't tell, this is the Woodward spiral staircase in downtown Vancouver that's been featured in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency2. this is one of the photos with a distinct brown tint as well, for some reason. it doesn't have anything to do with the underexposure, since two other brownish photos are outdoor shots of people.
apertures
once again I took approximately the same photo using all three different aperture settings; the ones above are the settings for ISO 400 on the left and ISO 100 on the right. for the left photo, I like the contrast between the shadowy shipping containers and the brightly-lit ones, but the train tracks really were too dark. on the other hand, for the right photo, while the train is more visible, the stuff in the background's kind of washed out, like the clouds and the orange cranes.
focal length
I never really paid much mind to focussing because this is a fixed-focus camera after all with a focal distance of "infinity", and I'm not all that interested in taking close-up shots of stuff, so here's me discovering that the infinite focal distance begins approximately a metre or so out from the camera. it's a shame because I do think this shot would've looked quite nice if only the focus were on those locks.
watcha lookin at
sometimes I'll take a photo of something I'm seeing because I think it looks cool and then I'll end up looking at the photo and not being sure about what exactly it is I wanted to be looking at. here I was thinking, oh that's a cool mural, that's a cool street lamp, the W in the sky is nice, the mannequins on top of the roof are a nice surprise, and in the end there's just maybe too many things in here. and you can't even see the mannequins on the roof properly because of how light the sky is! the mannequins are the best part! if my camera could take a zoomable lens...
up next
I'm currently about a quarter of the way through a new roll of film, Flic Film's UltraPan 400 β a black and white film! excited because it's my first time shooting B&W, but also nervous because it's my first time shooting B&W. I kind of have absolutely no idea what looks good in B&W or how to, like, "see" the things around me in B&W, and notice the things that would make great B&W shots. I'm usually drawn to bright colours and geometric lines, and I feel like I need to change how I choose what to take photos of to accomodate the film. we'll see, but likely much later, since this is a roll of 36 exposures, and I have a long way to go.
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cropped to a square because it's the one I posted on instagram, which I think turned out to be nicely framed like that
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spoilers: it's in the episode where bart gets stabbed by dirk
