Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Life goes by fast. Enjoy it. Calm down. It’s all funny. Next. Everyone gets so upset about the wrong things.— Joan Rivers
Can we talk…
You see, I’ve been messing around with digital photography for a long time. My first published story about digital imaging appeared in the January 1990 issue of Photomethods magazine. The editor was so freaked out by the concept that I put forth he put a disclaimer at the beginning of my column stating that this was “just Joe’s opinion” and didn’t reflect the magazine’s viewpoint. Less than a year later, that editor was gone as the publication changed it;s name to reflect a more digital point-of-view. (I had nothing to do with that; I was just a spectator.)
So maybe I’ve been a digital photographer for thirty or more years. But I’ve been a photographer for a lot longer than that, starting with my first camera—a hand me down Kodak Brownie—when i was eight years old.. So you could say I have lots more time behind a film camera than with a digital one, so hopefully that will help you understand my recent infatuation with film photography.
For the past two years, I’ve been purchasing some inexpensive 35mm SLRs, mostly from Japan. I shared some of my experiences, tips and advice about that process in a video on my YouTube channel; you can watch it here, if it’s of interest, I have also bought some film including the emulsions I mentioned here; all that film’s been received but I haven;t shot it—yet. I’d been shooting some expired film that’s been sitting in my refrigerator since Mary and I moved to Daisy Hill twelve years ago, And I’ve dusted off my old cameras with some modicum of success, which is what I wanted to talk about next.
How I Made this photograph: I’ve always liked the looks of the early sixties Ford Thunderbirds. I used my Jaguar-themed Leica Z2X point-and-shoot camera to photograph this 1962 Ford Thunderbird (correct me if I got the year wrong) at a local Cars & Coffee event. I installed a fresh and inexpensive CR 123A battery and loaded a roll of my new favorite color negative film, Kodak Gold 200 into the Z2X and…You can read more about that experience here,
My only medium format camera, other than a Holga, is a gold-trimmed Seagull TLR did not enjoy sitting on a shelf for the past twelve years and needed a CLA (Clean-Lubricate-Adjust.) It was hard finding anyone to work on a twenty plus year old Chinese camera but I found a shop in California and while the repair cost was, I thought, steep, It was more than the camera cost at the time. I really wanted to shoot some medium format film and the Seagull looked like the most economical router for me. (Hint: it wasn’t) When it was returned to me it had additional problems that the nice people at The Darkroom diagnosed as problems with the pressure plate.
My experience with my Leica M6 TTL was the opposite. It also sat unloved and untouched for the same amount of time as the Seagull, but when I dusted it off and put it in a new battery it performed like the thoroughbred it is. The same was true of the Minolta Pro 20, a much less expensive camera. I put it a new battery in it and it was off to the races.
The Near Future
I haven’t been able to do much film photography during the latter part of the year mostly because of what I“You don’t plan life, it just happens. And you sure as hell can’t control the things that happen to you. They just do.” Oh yeah, and it’s that film cost thing to.
If you would like to send a roll of film for me to review or other stuff for these posts and my videos, click on the Contact tab above and ask for my mailing address. And if you do, many thanks.