Fresh or expired?

I use lots of different films. Mostly because I am cheap and will take just about anything I find at a bargain. So my photography doesn't really have a consistent "look". That bothers me sometimes and then not at other times. Today it isn't bothering me. I just got done scanning four rolls of film and so I am a little excited about what I got. Scanning film is on one hand really tedious, but on the other hand it's like being a kid again on Christmas morning. The first time I see the negatives in inverted color, I get that sort of 'awe' feeling inside. It is surprise and delight and relief all in one.

I had 3 rolls of 35mm film and one of 120. The 35mm was all Kodak Ektachrome Slide Duplicating Film that had expired back in 1981. The 120 was fresh Kodak Portra 160. I had developed them all in Unicolor C-41 chemistry which is 'right' for the Portra, but 'cross' for the Ektachrome. Read more of my Adventures in Cross Processing here. So why am I making yet another post about this technique with the same old film?? Well the point here is to compare fresh negative film with expired slide film using photos of the same subject(s). This isn't strictly scientific since the photos weren't taken at the same time of day or under any other strictly controlled conditions. If you want that level of technical correctness, you will have to look elsewhere. I do science for a living, so I'm in this for the fun of it. But it is worth a look just to compare.

First the photos on the fresh Portra 160. I used my Yashica Mat 124G to take these. This poor camera is barely clinging to life, but still takes pretty good photos.

Nice, huh? The colors are natural, the grain is quite fine. I could easily blow these up to 24x24 inches and hang them on my wall if I chose to. In short, it is everything we have come to expect from this exceptional film emulsion.

Next, the photos from my Chinon CP-5. This was the first time I had used this camera, and I am pretty pleased with the quality of the glass and the exposures all seem correct.

This film creates a (to my eye) VERY different look. The colors are shifted (even when 'corrected' by the scanner) and saturated a little bit. The grain is noticeable, but not obtrusive. I think it lends a bit of a painterly or 'pictorialist' quality to the photos. It is short of the 'hipster/lomography' look that I think has been a bit over-done (just my opinion).

The bottom line is that I like both sets of photos, but I slightly favor the Ektachrome. It's very subjective and my opinion is likely to flip flop over time. Whichever you like better, I hope you enjoy them and have fun shooting some expired slide film on your own sometime.

Balboa Park

I took a break from camera repair one weekend to take my oldest son to the High School Student Shakespeare Festival here in San Diego at Balboa Park. Of course most of my time was spent watching young people perform scenes and monologues, but there was a bit of down time in between things and then waiting for winners to be announced. So I took the opportunity to use the Yashica Electro 35 GSN I had loaded up with Expired (2011) Neopan SS. There are probably more opportunities for 'street' photography there in the park than you could shake a rangefinder at, but I'm not much for photographing people. I know, I know... I'm working on it, but very slowly. So while avoiding the crowds, I took a few shots of some of the amazing architecture we have in this 100 year old park.

This is 'the Prado'

This is the Botanical Building and reflecting pool. I have some thoughts on the composition of this photo that I might share in another post.

A detail of this Botanical Building dome.

Here is another common sight at Balboa Park. Many artists comer here and paint, photograph, draw, dance, make music, perform, etc. So aside from the 17 museums, 9 performing arts venues, 19 gardens, and so much more, there are sidewalk artists everywhere to just enjoy.

I hope that if you are ever in Southern California that you will stop by Balboa Park and see why San Diegans love it so much.

Tech Notes:

• Film was exposed at EI 100 on a bright sunny day
• Development was done in Caffenol-CL, standing for 70min
• Epson V600 scanner
• Dust spotting in PS CS5.5

Landscape Details

Here are a few photos I took just around my workplace. The camera was my Yashica Electro 35 loaded with some expired Kodak Ektachrome Slide Duplicating Film. For these I used an EI of 100. These are pretty much straight off of the scanner with a little bit of dust spotting. Enjoy.

Transitioning Off Of Flickr

Looking back, I can see that it was inevitable. Flickr started making massive and dramatic changes to their site maybe around a year ago. At first they called it a 'Beta' and you could opt in or out. There was a seemingly huge backlash and people were writing scathing reviews on the photo forums and in the Flickr groups. Many people left at that point and found alternate places to host their photos. I tried to work with the Beta for a while, but eventually got fed up and tired of being frustrated, so I switched back to the older version of the user interface. I figured that Flickr would hear the outcry and modify their plans to change things so drastically. It was sort of 'out of sight, out of mind' for a few months, but early this week, they switched everyone over to the 'new' interface. No warning, no choice, and it was just as bad as I remembered. Additionally, my account is experiencing a bug so that I can only embed the original size photo here in my blog or on the forums where I like to share. Well, that is the proverbial straw that has broken the camel's back. I will not be loading photos on to Flickr and I have cancelled my 'Pro' account. I am going to give iPernity a try and see how things work over there. I did encounter one serious limitation initially, but have subsequently figured out a work around for it.

The problem was that I didn't want to jump into a paid 'Club' account right away. That meant that I did not have the functionality to get the embed code in html or bbcode so that I could share photos on my blog or the forums. I couldn't even get the url of a photo by the usual right-click -> Copy image url. It was completely blocked (as it is for all of their 'free account' users)! Now that seems a little dirty to me. The whole reason for using an image hosting site is to share your photos elsewhere. At least that is my primary use case. So what to do? Try another host like pBase or Photobucket? I didn't really feel like trolling around looking for the one image host that 'has it all', and I knew that many of my contacts from Flickr had moved to iPernity. As with many things in life Google has the solution! I generally use Chrome to browse the interwebz. I also have the benefit of being a bit of a computer nerd and have done some web development. So I thought I would just give the old CSS inspector a look to see if there was anything helpful there. Right click on the image and select "Inspect Element". Make sure that the "Elements" tab is selected at the top of the window that pops up at the bottom of your browser. There you will see a bunch of code. This is the cascading style sheet that controls what everything on a web page looks like (colors, fonts, layout, etc.). Right there on the highlighted line is the url (web address) for the image! BAM! Just what I was looking for! Now I can use that url to link directly to my photo. For the blog, I use html tags like this:
<img>http://u1.ipernity.com/41/63/61/31446361.32e384e1.640.jpg?r1</img>

For online forums, I use bbcode like this:
[img]http://u1.ipernity.com/41/63/61/31446361.32e384e1.640.jpg?r1[/img]

If I want a different size, I just select that size on iPernity so that I am viewing it and repeat the right click inspect element step. Then I have the url for that size image. Easy Peasy!!

I hope you find this helpful especially if you are migrating away from Flickr like I am and want to try iPernity for free for a while. Here is a photo from the first roll out of my 'new' Yashica Electro 35 GSN. This is a rangefinder camera from the mid-70's that was mass produced. They are super easy to get in good-ish condition. They do have some inherent issues, but if you aren't afraid to get your hands a little dirty, and open up a camera you probably paid less than $30US for, then it is a no-brainer. Just go get one. They come with a pretty darn good lens, the 45mm Yashinon 1:1.7. That's right, a nice sharp, clear, contrasty f/1.7 on a cheap camera. I shot this photo on some old Ilford FP4 that had expired back in 1981, so it is a little grainy, but over all I like the look.