A confession and bad prints (scans?)

I already confessed mentioned that I shot my first roll of film with a real camera. I failed to mention confess that I took it to MalWart to be developed. I knew better. And I did it anyway.

I find it sort of satisfying to hate that big store.

Ah, MalWart, you met all my grand expectations once again. I know you have issues with printing digital pictures. I could talk about color casts and suffocatingly heavy contrast and blocked up blacks and details thrown away. But why bother? A consumer gets what they pay for. Every time. Most of us already know that.

That first roll turned out (mostly) very much as I expected. But then there were just a few pictures that turned out really dark. I mean like, really really something-is-wrong underexposed dark. I went back through all the settings I had used and it didn't make any sense to me.

Printing pictures is one thing. Developing film and scanning is another thing entirely.

Have no fear! MalWart to the rescue!

Exhibit A:
Why did this turn out so very dark? My settings should have been good. I don't get it.



Or maybe that's not what the image really looks like at all.

Exhibit B:
Digital scan MalWart sold me with that printed image. Still dark, but night and day from the print. Ummm... what?



Exhibit C:
The digital scan from image number three. The one where I laid the camera across my lap to take some notes and hit the shutter with my elbow while the lens was aimed at the sky. Oops. Nice, huh?

But look closer. Such quality!



Developing my own film with coffee?

Maybe next time.

And yes, you actually can.

His support

Every time I mentioned it, his quiet comment was always the same. Always.

"No film"

It was where he drew the line.

"No film"

This whole photography thing of mine is all his fault. When I was drowning under the deep darkness of depression, being smothered by undiagnosed hypothyroidism, in the midst of trying to understand one child with undiagnosed autism and utterly exhausted from dealing with another child who would never ever sleep, AND in complete and absolute denial that I was again pregnant... he was the one who told me to get a hobby. Something for me? Yes, the blame is squarely on him. But he carries it well.

Too well, perhaps.

As my skills outgrew my equipment, he gently pushed me toward the more... ahem... professional expensive options.

But there has to be a line. Somewhere. And he drew it.

"No film"

For some reason, I casually mentioned it again. And again. Maybe it was something I read, that I thought was worth discussion. Or some quality of an analog image I saw, that dropped my jaw. Or some itch deep within me, that I didn't understand.



Or, possibly, three unused rolls of expired film rolling around in a drawer had something to do with it.

When it came to "if I spend my birthday money on this, and shoot one roll a month, would our marriage be over..." he sighed in loving defeat and told me I might as well get a glorious expensive medium format camera.

But that was where I drew the line. He didn't have the slightest clue what he was suggesting.



31. A new challenge: Fear of failure. Fear of success.
32. The perfect fit of an old beat-up Canon in my hand.
33. Expired Fuji 400 film.
34. Forced slowness.... the quiet of deliberately making every tiny decision for each click.
35. A notebook gathering much more information than I imagined. So much more than shutter speed, aperture and ISO.



36. My mind's view of the finished image.
37. The snap of a shutter that sounds like pure magic.
38. Not looking at the back of the camera even once.
39. Complete satisfaction in the face of delayed gratification.
40. Another reminder that I am human, as I simply enter "oops" in my notebook for image number three.
41. The entertainment my mother-in-law provided by her disbelief that I can't see the pictures on the back of the camera.
42. Listening to my boys oooh and aaaah after waiting so long to see the pictures.
43. Support and encouragement of a husband, even when I know he'd really rather not.