Sunday, December 16, 2018

Good news, bad news...

I shot film pretty consistently all through 2015 and then it sorta ground to a halt.

I don't develop film at home because there's not really any way to do so here at Roseholme Cottage. It's a tiny frame structure completely devoid of windowless interior rooms, and even the basement has glass brick windows along the long walls. I could use a dark bag and tanks, but that's a pain.

Anyway, what happened was that as that year drew to a close, I'd built up a backlog of around a dozen rolls of exposed film, plus a couple test rolls loaded in cameras, and I was like "That's it. No more film shooting until I reduce this backlog."

To send them in to The Darkroom, I need to pull out my little portable printer (which I'd bought for more or less this purpose), print out my order form, stick it in the little film mailer along with up to four rolls of film (the most that fit in one mailer) and send it off.

So discovering that Robert's could do it on-site was a revelation.

Without thinking, I dropped the stuff off and, as though I were back at one of the photolabs where I worked when Bush the Elder was still POTUS, breezily answered "Oh, just give me 4x6 prints!" when asked what service I wanted.

It wasn't until later that I realized my mistake.

See, when The Darkroom developed my stuff, they not only sent back the sleeved negatives and a set of prints, they also sent a CD-ROM of the .jpegs, and also uploaded the .jpegs to an account where you could access them.

So I've got cut and sleeved negatives of these latest rolls, and 4x6s...but that's not how we look at photos anymore. See? I'm holding this nice pic of a '64 GTO on Portra 160 up to the screen, and you guys can't see it.

I don't have a scanner, either. Robert's charges $3.99/roll for scanning at the time of developing, or $5.99/roll after the negs have been cut. I should have dispensed with the prints and just got them scanned. Oh well, next time.

Also, several of these rolls were test rolls to check certain old cameras for light leaks and such. The bad part is, except for a couple of pictures that immediately tie them to a certain camera at a certain time & place, I have no idea which roll went with which camera. The good part? At least none of them show the artifacts that would indicate light leaks.

Also, I was sure that the pictures of the GTO and of my mom & dad that I shot with the EOS 1N had been shot on Tri-X. Turns out it had Portra 160 in it.
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