Trip to New York and Finland

I have been shooting quite a bit in the last week with my Speedy. We are traveling in New York and Finland and last week we took a nice walk through Tribeca in Manhattan. It's cool how people stop by when I'm setting the camera up. Many people stopped by asking questions and talked about photography and the history if the area. Few stopped to welcome me to Tribeca which was very nice. I had first issue with my old wooden film holders while in Imatra in Finland. When I slid the exposure guard back in, it slipped on the wrong side of the film and once I took the holder out of the camera the shot was ruined. I don't know exactly how that happened or how I could prevent that from happening again. I'm excited to get the rest of the negatives developed though!

Farm

Farm, originally uploaded by M Skaffari.

Old abandoned farmhouse near Bolinas, CA.

Unfortunately the white walls were a bit overexposed and now look slightly murky.

Skyscraper

Skyscraper, originally uploaded by M Skaffari.

Battery street

Battery, originally uploaded by M Skaffari.

Flag

Flag, originally uploaded by M Skaffari.

Montgomery

Montgomery, originally uploaded by M Skaffari.

This is the first shot taken with Ekfe PL 100 M film.

Hard to say anything definite of the film from one shot, but it looks to have higher contrast than Ilford FP4+ and also bigger grain. I'll have to see some more shots to give better opinion about it.

Results from the night shoot

Osgood, originally uploaded by M Skaffari.

I scanned the negatives from a night shoot some days back. They look absolutely fantastic! The old Dogmar lens can't really take any highlights and all bright spots are beautifully haloed. The contrast is not too high and I actually increased the contrast in Photoshop after the scan. No other editing done.

I scanned at 6400DPI which resulted in 32000 * 25600 pixel (800mpix?) files so if someone needs a large print I have files to give ;)

Complaining helps always

Yesterday I wrote on my problem of not being able to buy the film holder. Well, now I have one. Actually I don't have it yet, but won one Polaroid 550 on eBay auction. And also paid less than I was willing to invest. Groovy!

Looking for Polaroid pack film holder

I have been looking for either Polaroid 550 or Fuji PA-45 pack film holder for a while now. I would like to get a second hand one that is in reasonably good shape for reasonable amount of money. I have been bidding on both on eBay, but keep getting overbid, no matter ow far I'm willing to go. I could go and buy the Fuji PA-45 new for about 200$, but would like to save some money also.

If anyone happens to have one and are willing to part with it I would be very interested.

Polaroid 550 image by Polapix

Nice Touch

Nice Touch
Originally uploaded by M Skaffari

The film and papers arrived. The thank you note was a very nice touch.

New film and paper source

Last week I discovered Freestyle Photographic Supplies, a photo shop in Hollywood. They are kind of a photo shop I would like to have here locally. They seen to have very extensive selection of quirky materials, such as Croatian films and papers, infrared, reversal, Polaroid etc. Basically everything you don't _need_ but still want. They also seem to have extensive selection of cameras and accessories. Very cool!

I ordered a box of EFKE PL100M film and a box of Arista Private Reserve VC RC photo paper. Including delivery charges I paid 84$. I'm really waiting for the delivery which is happening today even though I ordered the material on Thanksgiving day. Very, very fast delivery.

Buying Ilford film & paper from Calumet would have cost me roughly 125$. Ilford may be somewhat better quality, but 30% cheaper is still better for me.

Disapontment

Now I did it! I took half a box of non-exposed film to be developed. I feel like a moron. Luckily Chris from Photoworks had pity on me and I only paid half for what I would have paid normally.

This experiment cost me ~10$ in film and ~25$ in processing. So 35$ learning on how to mark film boxes.

The solution: Have 1 box that is for exposed film. Write very clearly "EXPOSED, Ready to be developed" on the box. All other boxes of film should be marked "Instructions for lab: DO NOT DEVELOP, THE IDIOT BROUGHT NON-EXPOSED FILM HERE. Call him at: 555 1234". This way the lab at least checks with you before ruining your film and making you pay for it.

Darkroom

I managed to carve few hours to go into a darkroom to develop few pictures yesterday. It was a blast. This time there were other people in the darkroom also, 5 total including me. Occasionally there was a queue to the development trays.

I made 3 prints from my 4x5's and two from 35mm negatives. It really is so much nicer to work with large film. I highly recommend to everybody. The 35mm negatives were shot using Ilford XP2 Super film which is one of my favorite films to print from. It paled in comparison to Ilford FP4 Plus in 4x5 format.

I know the math when enlarging from 35mm compared to 4x5. There are 20 times more data in the 4x5 thus 20 times the details. I'm still amazed by the difference when looking at the prints side by side.

Now I need to get the images scanned so I can show off. Naturally the web presentation won't do any justice to the prints. But at least my parents can see a picture of themselves ;)

Polaroid

This picture by lost in pixels inspired me to start taking Polaroid pictures with my Speedy.

Since Polaroid filed for Chapter 11 and stopped manufacturing instant film, Fujifilm of Japan could start importing their own instant film into US. I couldn't find out if I could use the Fuji film packs with my Graflex pack film adapter that I bought through eBay some time back, I went to Calumet and bought one pack of the film to try out.

Here's info for anyone else who is looking for it: Fujifilm FP-100B45 (Black & White) and FP-100C45 (color) are NOT compatible with the Graflex pack film holder. Instead you have to use either Fuji PA-45, or Polaroid 550 Pack Film holder.

The Graflex pack film holder doesn't have the development rollers that are needed to develop Fuji instant film.

Film loading

I'm getting more and more comfortable with loading film into the holders. I might have a problem though. We are moving to a new apartment and we won't have a room that we can get completely dark. I may have to start loading the film in the public darkroom facility.