Wednesday, September 09, 2015

Grainy as Knotty Pine

Back in June, I shot a LOT of film while at Photostock in Harbor Springs.  Usually I am pretty serious about the camera and film combinations, and Photostock often affords me the opportunity to try out some things in a serious way, and to also go off in the other direction--  as in shooting something that will probably completely suck, or be surprisingly amazing.   This time, I used a roll of Kodak Ektachrome 400 that expired in 1999, and was of uncertain provenance.  I shot it in my Lomo La Sardina, which of course, gave me little chance for a good exposure.  Slide film in a simple camera is usually asking for trouble. Expired high-ISO Ektachrome in a La Sardina is just pissing in the wind.

With low expectations, I opened the box of developed and mounted slides.  My fears were founded. The images were badly overexposed on film that had lost some latitude to begin with.  In bright sun, the camera is about 1/100th sec at f8.  So, it was already about 5 stops overexposed.  I finally scanned them in last night and opened the images in Paint Shop Pro.  Some post-processing to tame the highlights and bring out the details at least gave me something.  A little fine-tuning and I have some typical Lomo-esque shots -- which is what I guess I was asking for.  The grain is really something, I'll say.

Anyhow, I'll let the photos speak for themselves...












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