Craft! Bang! Boom!

(First of all, I now has a Twitter. In case anyone cares. I don’t know. Sometimes I have thoughts that are 140 characters or less.)

So, I developed the rolls of infrared film I took on vacation. They were all the Efke IR820. I was a little nervous shooting them because I had only managed to take one successful picture with that film before I left.

I had originally bought a pack of 4×5 sheet film with the thought that I could do pinhole infrared pics with the Exposed pinhole camera. I tried shooting 2 or 3 pictures with it before we left, and they were all massive FAILs. Whatever exposure length one needs with a pinhole plus an R72 filter, I certainly wasn’t getting it. So, instead, I just glued a step ring to the front of the Ansco 4×5 box camera I happened to have, and decided to use that for my 4×5 infrared sheet film.

However, since I can only have one sheet of film in the camera at a time before having to move it to a dark bag and changing out film, I really didn’t use this camera much at all on vacation. I only took 3 pictures with it. But, at least it worked.

The other Efke IR820 I worked with was 2 rolls of 127 film and 3 rolls of 120. I shot the 127 in my Yashica 44LM, and the 120 in my Yashica C. I had managed to find a Bayonet to 49mm step ring on ebay, and then added another 49mm to 52mm step ring finally to the filter. It wasn’t exactly the most elegant set up, and I was a little concerned that it wasn’t going to work, but amazingly, it all seemed to go okay. I followed the recommendations of The Plastic Landscape and stuck to (when I could) an aperture of f16 and a shutter speed of 1 second. There were a few times I tried opening up the aperture wider and shortening the shutter speed, and I think those worked, too.

Unless I’m shooting night time long exposures, I really dislike messing with tripods, so most of the time, I tried to find rocks or other hard surfaces to set the camera on when shooting. Fortunately, the shutter button on the Yashicas is really squishy, so I wasn’t jostling the camera at all when I took the picture.

The weird thing was the diffference between the 127 and the 120 versions of the film. The 127 is expired, but just barely (I think it expired in Feb 2009), but for some reason it came out really noisy and low contrast compared to the 120. I have no idea why this happened – if it’s because of the film, or maybe the camera used. My Yashica 44LM is in a state of dubious repair – it feels as if it needs some screws tightened somewhere, but I can’t find anything on it to tighten without tearing it down. I actually expected it to be way light leaky, but in that matter, it didn’t seem any worse than the Yashica C (I got a light leak along one edge of the film, but normally not bad enough to alter the picture). Here’s what one of the pics from the Yashica 44 looks untouched:

This one was probably the best photo to come off the 127 film. Here’s one that’s been cleaned up a bit:

What the heck is up with that grain? I have no idea. Freestyle Photo is selling a bunch of Efke IR820 127 as a past date special for about 1/2 off. I was thinking about buying more of it until I saw the results of the 127 I shot. Now I think I’d rather just pay full price and shoot with the 120. Here are some shots with the 120 film:

I’ve got some more pics from the other rolls of 120 I haven’t uploaded yet. They look nice and smooth, too. So I don’t know what’s going on with the 127. I have one more roll of it to burn through, but I think I’m going to stick with the 120 and 4×5 sheet film of the Efke IR820 from now on.

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Back from vacation. Took too many cameras, and picked up some new ones on the way home. Somewhat surprisingly, I didn’t touch the Lensbaby at all while we were out west. I used it a ton in DC, but not at all for this vacation. Weird. Only got out the Ansco 4×5 camera a few times because it was such a pain to deal with (mainly, just big and bulky and I could only shoot one pic at a time). I think I shot 3 sheets of infrared film with it.

Shot a few rolls of the Efke 820 with both the Yashica C and the Yashica 44. I suspect that the Yashica 44 is too light leaky for the infrared film to work – it may just all come out clear, which is what happened to the last roll I tried to shoot through there. Hopefully at least the stuff in the Yashi C will turn out. I shot most, if not all of it, sans tripod, because I’m lazy. I just set the cameras down on the ground or a rock and hoped for the best. I shot one roll of it at the Sand Dunes and tried shortening the exposure times and opening up the aperture way up so I could do some hand held shots. Have no idea if those will turn out.

I did wind up playing with the new Exposed Pinhole 4×5 camera quite a bit. I’d guess I shot around 50 sheets of 4×5 film with it? Maybe? Half and half black and white and slide. I need to get some more E6 developer before I can develop any of the slide sheets. I was thinking on maybe trying to start developing the black and white stuff sometime next week, though. Here’s hoping my exposed film storage solutions are light tight!

I did shoot quite a lot of film – about 5 or 6 cartridges, I think – of 126 film using a Kodak X-25 Instamatic. The film expired in 1976 and 1981. I’ve shot and developed some 126 film of this vintage before (although I haven’t uploaded it to Flickr, for whatever reason – I think because the negatives got so filthy I was embarrassed of them), and it’s been hit and miss.

Anyway, Polaroids are easy, and I took a bunch of those – probably about 12 packs worth – on vacation. The one at the top is one of my favorites. I was shooting with some ebay Fuji FP-100B that expired in 2004 that worked really well.

Mmm, sexy, sexy gray tones!

Also shot with ebay Fuji FP-100C (expired in 2008). I think I have a tendency to let these overdevelop. This one, though, is one of my favorite pics from the whole trip:

My friend Andy managed to hook me up with 4 double packs of expired (2006) Polaroid 669 film before we left, which was awesome. This was the first time I’ve ever ran Polaroid film proper through the 230 or 330. All they’ve eaten before has been Fuji film. The 669 actually turned out to be quite a bit funkier than I had anticipated. Maybe it was stored someplace weird? Who knows. I got a massive blue shift to the pics taken with it.

Still, pretty interesting.

Incidentally, we spent about 6 days at Lake Granby and Grand Lake, Colorado, and I wound up taking a million pictures of these:

Every time I was using a different camera or shooting with a new type of film, I had to take paddleboat pictures. I’m hoping the ones I took with the 4×5 pinhole camera using the slide film turn out.

Of the new cameras, I scored a Diana for $20 that came loaded with a roll of half-shot Kodacolor II in it. Score!

Ellie puked on it. I left it sitting on the dining room table, and she must have jumped up there in the middle of the night and let it rip. Blerg. Anyway, I look forward to shooting the rest of the roll and developing it. Will it be awesome? Maybe.

The other intriguing camera (not that the 35mm Graflex and the Fiesta loaded with 127 film aren’t intriguing) that I got was the tiny Rocket camera Travis found. It’s the first 120 camera that I’ve gotten that takes 16 rectangular images instead of 12 square or 8 big rectangles. Hooray! I loaded it up with film but haven’t shot anything with it yet. It’s been gray and dreary since we’ve returned.

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