[kb244]

@kb244 - you said it yourself; you have the LUXURY of access to darkroom facilities.

Once more: we are talking to someone who is JUST starting to dip their toes in the waters of film; PLEASE bear that in mind and try not to overwhelm them at once with details of how they ought to be doing their home developing and printing!!!

And as I already said, all that I've mentioned can be sent out for development without any special instructions. Something you have to do anyways in this day and age with E6 and C41 in most locations.

I think all the necessary caveats have been mentioned, I see no point to making a mountain of a molehill at this point. I also see no point in denying someone what I would consider the very very very basic information in regards to film choices, he's not a child.

[Lazmarr]

The difference between 24 exposure and 36 exposure is you get 12 more frames in the 36 exposure roll. Labs will charge you the same to process/develop a roll. So cost-wise, it's cheaper to get 36 exposure rolls. The downside is snapping 12 more frames before you can run off to the lab to see how they turned out!

If you're coming from digital, ask your lab if they can process, scan, and upload to a cloud service. Scanning digitizes the film into JPG or TIFF files. A lab will either burn them to a CD or upload to Dropbox or similar or email them to you. It's much more convenient to get them from a cloud service or email. I made the mistake of getting my first roll as 4 X 6 prints instead of scans. After that, I realized I was going to quickly fill up a drawer full of crap photos. Now I get scans and only get prints of the keepers.

Oh, and another budget film is Agfa Vista 400. Here's a review.

Recommended film: Tri-X 400.

Good price here too:
Ultrafine Xtreme Black & White Film - Traditional Black-and-White Films

If in a pinch for funds, other than Ultrafine Xtreme, there's also Arista EDU Ultra (aka Fomapan rebranded, but a little cheaper than Foma), as well as Kentmere 100 and 400 (made by the same company that makes Ilford films, it's not ilford film, but rather an entirely new emulsion they created that was more economical to produce, and as a result cheaper to purchase). The Arista EDU Ultra 200 is my favorite of the cheapies as it has a more vintage/retro look compared to the 100/400 variants.

The downside though is last time I checked, not all the cheaper films have DX coding on them, so double check first. (and because I bulk load, I would need those DX stickers to use on a P30, or just stick to the defaulted ISO 100 the camera picks without DX coding)

Tri-X 400 is probably my favorite, but I don't really use it much as it has gone up in cost, they also raised the price of bulk rolls to where they're much more expensive than just buying 18 rolls of 36 exposures (roughly how many rolls in a single 100 foot roll).

Another past favorite, but a bit pricey is Fuji Neopan Arcos 100.

As murrelet said, the only difference is the number of images you can take. The 36 exposure film will be cheaper per image but it also has disadvantages.
For instance if you experiment with some settings you have to wait for 12 more pictures before you can process the film yourself or send it to a lab. It doesn't sound like a big problem, but when using film I tend to be substantially more selective in what I photograph. It is not unusual for me that a 24 exposure film lasts up to 6 month in the camera before I used all frames and without any exif-data you might have a hard time remembering what you where experimenting with if you don't took notes during shooting.

Thank you very much, now that I think about it it's pretty self expanatory what exposures are I shall give those films a look at and see what they're like. Might be quite good to compare them to the Fujifilm I ordered to see which looks good to me
I will defintely double check the DX coding as well.

Oh yes. I don't have any problem going quickly through a roll if there's something to photograph (my kids playing with their friends in the local park, for example), but right now when it's minus 20C outside and snowing and nobody's playing anywhere and I don't want to risk a film body outside, it can be hard to get through a roll.

Geez, Pathdoc, where do you live, Northern Canada? Fairbanks, Alaska? Oslo, Norway? Please consider blowing some of your -20C weather down in my general direction. We're already running A/C down here in West Cairo -- aka Houston, Texas.

After reading murrelet's very modern way of dealing with the results of his exposed film, and kb244's treatise on current B&W emulsions, I thought I'd add just a bit that Lazmarr may find useful, being brand new to film and all.

Lazmarr, gone are the days of being able to drop your film off at Wal-Mart or Walgreens or CVS and expect such basics as having your negatives returned to you -- and none of these places offer in-house processing anymore. No, you have to find a Pro Lab for that sort of thing now, and you'll be paying Pro Lab prices for the service too. Places like Walgreens will still take your film in for developing, but they send it off, and it takes about a week before you get it back. But instead of negatives, you'll get a CD with scans of your photos. Last time I checked, the scans on the CDs were only about 5 megapixel scans, which is gonna limit your print size to about 4x6 -- maybe 8x10 if you don't look too close.

But as murrelet mentioned, when you're first starting out, you probably shouldn't be too worried about prints anyway. Now, if it just so happens that one of your first photos is brilliant, well too bad for you because the labs places like Walgreens use don't return the negatives. No, if you want to use a lab that might be more economical than a Pro Lab that returns negs, you're looking at using a mail-order service, like Dwayne's -- there are lots of others, but Dwayne's is the only one I'm familiar with and is probably the best known. Dwayne's will also do whatever you want, including making prints, but they'll also return your negatives.

Now, just a brief word about all those B&W films that kb244 mentioned -- in case you might be wondering where to find them, go to freestylephoto.biz for all your film needs, whether color or B&W:

Home | Freestyle Photographic Supplies

Oh, and one final comment about the film you chose. After a hiatus of not shooting any film for several years, when I started getting back into shooting film again back in 2009, I discovered a vastly changed landscape and, on impulse, bought a few rolls of Fuji Superia 400. I'll be honest. I hated the stuff. I thought it was too grainy -- mushy even -- with uninspired colors. But then I'd been used to shooting with very saturated, very sharp, slow slide film emulsions, so perhaps that was some of it. It wasn't until I'd been using the stuff for a while and began to remember some of the tricks with respect to negative film emulsions that one uses to bring out colors and reduce the apparent size of grain that things finally began to improve. Unfortunately, your P30 supports DX coding only, from what I understand. I just scanned a page on the Internet about it -- it seems to be a very basic camera with a Program mode. And it doesn't seem to have Exposure Compensation. But it does have metered manual, so you can still perform the same thing that EC does, albeit manually. When shooting with your camera, try deliberately overexposing by from 1/3 to 2/3 stops, and keep track of which you're doing. But whatever you do, don't underexpose your film. See, the important thing to remember about negative film is it hates to be underexposed. Things just go *bluh*. Some emulsions don't even look very good at box speed. But dial in 1/3 to 2/3 stop of overexposure, and suddenly you've transformed your film from dull to full of life and color and dynamism. Negative film can handle overexposure much better than underexposure, and often it can handle an incredible amount of overexposure. So anyway, give a bit of overexposure a try, see if I'm not right.

I used up all my 36 exposures yesterday when out for a walk getting to grips with the camera haha Still need to learn all the mechanisms of how it works; especially the f.stop, aperture size and shutter speed. The gist I have so far is that, the lower the f.stop value the larger the aperture thus the higher exposure and less depth of field. To compensate for the increase in exposure a quicker shutter speed would be used to reduce the amount of light captured?
I still have to figure out which shutter speeds to use, although the slower the shutter speed has more danger of shaking, I was advised that the denominator of the shutter speed should remain larger than the size of your lens; i.e for a 50mm lens a shutter speed of 1/60 or higher would be best to use. Is this good advise and how do you choose shutter for lighting conditions?

There's in fact a place that I can post off my films to be developed. There's prices don't seem extortionate, £13 for Develop and scan to CD in high resolution 6000x4000.TIFF uploaded to Dropbox; and the negatives are returned as well at no extra cost
Prints do cost more, however. But I don't think I'll be printing anything off until I find out how they look first....for all I know they could be atrocious
The P30 can use non DX coded film but it's locked to an ISO of 100/
As for the underexposure and overexposure, what do you mean by dialling in 1/3 to 2/3 stop?
I'll definitely look for some better film but I'll update my thread with the images, once they've been developed, so I can get some insight on where I've gone wrong and whether I may need to overexpose them more or less
Thank you very much for the information! I really appreciate it, especially since I am new to this. My only foray into photography is with my smartphone's camera...

[pathdoc]

The gist I have so far is that, the lower the f.stop value the larger the aperture thus the higher exposure and less depth of field. To compensate for the increase in exposure a quicker shutter speed would be used to reduce the amount of light captured?

Yes. For a given film speed and illumination of the scene, the correct exposure is a matter of time and light - enough light (aperture) for enough time (shutter speed). The decision you have to make is what matters more to you - depth of field or lack of motion blur (sometimes you WANT motion blur, and judging how much is a fine art in itself). The fact that you have a whole range of possible shutter speeds and apertures that are nominally equivalent can be difficult, and one can pick from a number of basic rules:

1) The Sunny Sixteen basis: shutter speed set numerically as close as possible to your ASA, and adjust aperture to get to the right exposure (per the camera's meter).

2) The slowest possible: shutter speed set numerically to the reciprocal of the lens focal length (or the next fastest speed thereto), match aperture for correct exposure. (Some advise to keep hand-held shots at or above 1/60 regardless of the lens being used.)

3) The f/8 and you're there method: a lot of lenses are at their best and sharpest stopped down a bit from maximum aperture, and f/8 is regarded by some as something of a general sweet spot (and attainable by most lenses except the most extreme, specialised, and weird). Choose f/8 and adjust your shutter speed to match (assuming enough light to obey rule 2, otherwise select a wider aperture, brace elbows/rest against a surface or bring a tripod).

4) Shooting for effect - choose your aperture for maximum or minimum depth of field as the artistic mood takes you, and live with the shutter speed the situation throws up (within the camera's limits).

5) Shooting for activity - running kids or dogs etc. usually need at least 1/250; how much faster you can get depends on the light and how wide you can make your aperture.

Most Pentax manual lenses can select half-stops somewhere up to f/11, and then whole stops from there (because it's mechanically difficult to be exact about the half stops after that). Not until the AF and digital bodies could you reliably select intervals of 1/3 stop. Cameras that can have their ASA manually reset (NOT the P3/30 series) offer the opportunity to force the camera to think it ought to over- or under-expose to suit certain circumstances in such fine graduations, but unfortunately not yours. Don't sweat it.

Remember that a subject with bright, glarey sun behind them will fool your camera into thinking the subject themselves is brighter than they really are. Either shoot from another angle OR get really close to them and make your shutter/aperture selections without the sun being in the viewfinder, or if you can't, go one or two shutter speed clicks SLOWER than the camera tells you so that your subject's face is properly exposed.

Remember that all the above are STARTING POINTS; ultimately nobody else can predict the lighting and subject situations you will face and advise exactly what you should always do. Experience must be your guide.

[cooltouch]

Good, solid advice from pathdoc. One point of clarification to what he wrote, his point number 1. Strictly speaking the "Sunny Sixteen" or Sunny f/16 rule is the reciprocal of the film ISO as shutter speed with the lens set to f/16. This is correct exposure for bright sun conditions. A good way, in fact, to check the accuracy of your camera's meter is, on a sunny day, to point your camera at blank blue sky away from the sun and check the meter's readout. If it's accurate, it should agree exactly with -- or at least be very close (+/- 1/3 stop) to -- the sunny f/16 rule.

I used up all my 36 exposures yesterday when out for a walk getting to grips with the camera haha Still need to learn all the mechanisms of how it works; especially the f.stop, aperture size and shutter speed. The gist I have so far is that, the lower the f.stop value the larger the aperture thus the higher exposure and less depth of field. To compensate for the increase in exposure a quicker shutter speed would be used to reduce the amount of light captured? I still have to figure out which shutter speeds to use, although the slower the shutter speed has more danger of shaking, I was advised that the denominator of the shutter speed should remain larger than the size of your lens; i.e for a 50mm lens a shutter speed of 1/60 or higher would be best to use. Is this good advise and how do you choose shutter for lighting conditions?

Your instincts are correct with all points. Now you need to go practice, practice, practice, until this is second nature.

Pathdoc suggested that you get up close to your subject and meter there so as to eliminate the sun's glare from influencing exposure. This is excellent advice. With any camera that uses a simple metering system, like center-weighted averaging, extraneous light sources can negatively affect exposure by fooling the camera into thinking a scene is brighter than it actually is, causing dreaded underexposure. Developing your eye so that you can recognize this sort of problematic scene will go a long way toward increasing your yield of keeper photos.

Pathdoc's number 5 recommendation -- I would add that, with some activities, you actually want to blur motion rather than freeze it. Two examples -- panning as a race car passes in front of you, shooting at 1/125 or 1/60, will nicely blur the background and the car's wheels. Same goes for motorcycles or most any conveyance that goes speeding by you where you want to capture the sensation of speed. If you happen to attend an airshow with your camera, the same general advice is true for shooting photos of propeller driven aircraft. They need prop blur, or else it looks like they're hanging in the sky attached to invisible string. You can get by with speeds as fast as 1/250 to blur props, but 1/125 or 1/60 are better. The trick to this -- and race car photography also -- is you're usually shooting with telephotos of 300mm focal length or longer -- and you need sharp photos with these long lenses and slow shutter speeds. It is possible to develop smooth panning motions where you'll be able to get sharp photos at these slow speeds, but sometimes it's better to use a monopod -- useful for both its flexibility and stability.

As for the underexposure and overexposure, what do you mean by dialling in 1/3 to 2/3 stop?

Sorry that I'm not better acquainted with the P30. You probably only have the capability of setting half-stops with the P30. Hopefully. Even if the meter doesn't show this, you can still set half-stops on your lens. Some lenses have half-stop clicks. Others, you can still position the aperture ring between full aperture numbers.

Anyway, what I meant by dialing in these values is manually opening up your lens. I should have realized that, with no exposure compensation, 1/3 stops wouldn't be possible. So anyway, let's say you meter a scene and it's telling you something like 1/250 @ f/8. To open it up a half-stop, move the aperture ring to the position between f/8 and f/5.6. To open it up a full stop -- don't be afraid, it's negative film, it can handle it -- open your lens up to f/5.6. If, after you've gotten your film back and you like the way it responded to this added dose of light, you'll just have to keep this in mind, since your camera doesn't have an ISO dial. Man oh man, you need to get yourself a real camera, like a KX. Then you can just adjust your ISO to fudge things. That's what I usually do. I shoot ISO 400 print film at ISO 320. ISO 100 print film at ISO 80, etc. I suppose it's worth mentioning that, if you're shooting slide film, the recommendations are just the opposite. Back in the glory days of Kodachrome, I would shoot Kodachrome 64 at ISO 80 (a 1/3 stop increase), but I would always shoot E-6 film, like Ektachrome and Fujichrome, at box speed. I've heard of some folks increasing ISO of E-6 films by 1/3 stop also, but I've never tried it.

[jtkratzer]

Only thing I'll add, if it was already said, I missed it - don't start with expired film. Shoot fresh stuff so you know what you're getting based on the film and your decisions, not the oddities of expired film.

[pathdoc]

Only thing I'll add, if it was already said, I missed it - don't start with expired film. Shoot fresh stuff so you know what you're getting based on the film and your decisions, not the oddities of expired film.

I will second this. It is possible to compensate for those oddities, BUT that depends on shooting at a lower ISO and you can't do that with the P3/30 series!

I shot an expired roll once, but it was more to make sure that the camera was actually feeding, metering and exposing film and without much care as to what the pictures actually looked like. (They were grossly underexposed, which is what I later found out was just what to expect, but then the film had an expiry date of 1997!!!.)

[kb244]

Only thing I'll add, if it was already said, I missed it - don't start with expired film. Shoot fresh stuff so you know what you're getting based on the film and your decisions, not the oddities of expired film.

Ditto, expired film is great to experiment with (or simply have "fun" with), but only after you got your workflow down knowing that everything is as it should be.

[Ranchu]

Just get Kodak Ultramax 400, it's great. Fuji 400 and 200 are not good, imo.

[othar]

I will second this. It is possible to compensate for those oddities, BUT that depends on shooting at a lower ISO and you can't do that with the P3/30 series!

I shot an expired roll once, but it was more to make sure that the camera was actually feeding, metering and exposing film and without much care as to what the pictures actually looked like. (They were grossly underexposed, which is what I later found out was just what to expect, but then the film had an expiry date of 1997!!!.)

Well you can compensate manually for every shot, but I am not entirely sure you can expect underexposure as a general rule. I shot a film roll once that was about 7 years expired, I am not sure if the colours where supposed to look as they did, but the exposure was fine.

[Xmas]

Enjoy the experience.
Remember to check that rewind knob is turning as you wind on to next exposure and to rewind before opening back!
A good photo book might help.

[kb244]

Just get Kodak Ultramax 400, it's great. Fuji 400 and 200 are not good, imo.

Fuji Reala is nice though (bout $3 a roll from most places, it's around $10 for 3 of the UltraMax).

Kodak Portra 400VC runs about $36 for a 5 pack now days... but the biggest difference usually in the past anyways was that Portra tended to be shipped and then refrigerated at the optimal age, whereas consumer film could vary slightly, which might not be so much the case now days and only matters really to a commercial professional.

[Lazmarr]

Yes. For a given film speed and illumination of the scene, the correct exposure is a matter of time and light - enough light (aperture) for enough time (shutter speed). The decision you have to make is what matters more to you - depth of field or lack of motion blur (sometimes you WANT motion blur, and judging how much is a fine art in itself). The fact that you have a whole range of possible shutter speeds and apertures that are nominally equivalent can be difficult, and one can pick from a number of basic rules:

1) The Sunny Sixteen basis: shutter speed set numerically as close as possible to your ASA, and adjust aperture to get to the right exposure (per the camera's meter).

2) The slowest possible: shutter speed set numerically to the reciprocal of the lens focal length (or the next fastest speed thereto), match aperture for correct exposure. (Some advise to keep hand-held shots at or above 1/60 regardless of the lens being used.)

3) The f/8 and you're there method: a lot of lenses are at their best and sharpest stopped down a bit from maximum aperture, and f/8 is regarded by some as something of a general sweet spot (and attainable by most lenses except the most extreme, specialised, and weird). Choose f/8 and adjust your shutter speed to match (assuming enough light to obey rule 2, otherwise select a wider aperture, brace elbows/rest against a surface or bring a tripod).

4) Shooting for effect - choose your aperture for maximum or minimum depth of field as the artistic mood takes you, and live with the shutter speed the situation throws up (within the camera's limits).

5) Shooting for activity - running kids or dogs etc. usually need at least 1/250; how much faster you can get depends on the light and how wide you can make your aperture.

Most Pentax manual lenses can select half-stops somewhere up to f/11, and then whole stops from there (because it's mechanically difficult to be exact about the half stops after that). Not until the AF and digital bodies could you reliably select intervals of 1/3 stop. Cameras that can have their ASA manually reset (NOT the P3/30 series) offer the opportunity to force the camera to think it ought to over- or under-expose to suit certain circumstances in such fine graduations, but unfortunately not yours. Don't sweat it.

Remember that a subject with bright, glarey sun behind them will fool your camera into thinking the subject themselves is brighter than they really are. Either shoot from another angle OR get really close to them and make your shutter/aperture selections without the sun being in the viewfinder, or if you can't, go one or two shutter speed clicks SLOWER than the camera tells you so that your subject's face is properly exposed.

Remember that all the above are STARTING POINTS; ultimately nobody else can predict the lighting and subject situations you will face and advise exactly what you should always do. Experience must be your guide.

Good, solid advice from pathdoc. One point of clarification to what he wrote, his point number 1. Strictly speaking the "Sunny Sixteen" or Sunny f/16 rule is the reciprocal of the film ISO as shutter speed with the lens set to f/16. This is correct exposure for bright sun conditions. A good way, in fact, to check the accuracy of your camera's meter is, on a sunny day, to point your camera at blank blue sky away from the sun and check the meter's readout. If it's accurate, it should agree exactly with -- or at least be very close (+/- 1/3 stop) to -- the sunny f/16 rule.

Your instincts are correct with all points. Now you need to go practice, practice, practice, until this is second nature.

Pathdoc suggested that you get up close to your subject and meter there so as to eliminate the sun's glare from influencing exposure. This is excellent advice. With any camera that uses a simple metering system, like center-weighted averaging, extraneous light sources can negatively affect exposure by fooling the camera into thinking a scene is brighter than it actually is, causing dreaded underexposure. Developing your eye so that you can recognize this sort of problematic scene will go a long way toward increasing your yield of keeper photos.

Pathdoc's number 5 recommendation -- I would add that, with some activities, you actually want to blur motion rather than freeze it. Two examples -- panning as a race car passes in front of you, shooting at 1/125 or 1/60, will nicely blur the background and the car's wheels. Same goes for motorcycles or most any conveyance that goes speeding by you where you want to capture the sensation of speed. If you happen to attend an airshow with your camera, the same general advice is true for shooting photos of propeller driven aircraft. They need prop blur, or else it looks like they're hanging in the sky attached to invisible string. You can get by with speeds as fast as 1/250 to blur props, but 1/125 or 1/60 are better. The trick to this -- and race car photography also -- is you're usually shooting with telephotos of 300mm focal length or longer -- and you need sharp photos with these long lenses and slow shutter speeds. It is possible to develop smooth panning motions where you'll be able to get sharp photos at these slow speeds, but sometimes it's better to use a monopod -- useful for both its flexibility and stability.

Sorry that I'm not better acquainted with the P30. You probably only have the capability of setting half-stops with the P30. Hopefully. Even if the meter doesn't show this, you can still set half-stops on your lens. Some lenses have half-stop clicks. Others, you can still position the aperture ring between full aperture numbers.

Anyway, what I meant by dialing in these values is manually opening up your lens. I should have realized that, with no exposure compensation, 1/3 stops wouldn't be possible. So anyway, let's say you meter a scene and it's telling you something like 1/250 @ f/8. To open it up a half-stop, move the aperture ring to the position between f/8 and f/5.6. To open it up a full stop -- don't be afraid, it's negative film, it can handle it -- open your lens up to f/5.6. If, after you've gotten your film back and you like the way it responded to this added dose of light, you'll just have to keep this in mind, since your camera doesn't have an ISO dial. Man oh man, you need to get yourself a real camera, like a KX. Then you can just adjust your ISO to fudge things. That's what I usually do. I shoot ISO 400 print film at ISO 320. ISO 100 print film at ISO 80, etc. I suppose it's worth mentioning that, if you're shooting slide film, the recommendations are just the opposite. Back in the glory days of Kodachrome, I would shoot Kodachrome 64 at ISO 80 (a 1/3 stop increase), but I would always shoot E-6 film, like Ektachrome and Fujichrome, at box speed. I've heard of some folks increasing ISO of E-6 films by 1/3 stop also, but I've never tried it.

Only thing I'll add, if it was already said, I missed it - don't start with expired film. Shoot fresh stuff so you know what you're getting based on the film and your decisions, not the oddities of expired film.

Ditto, expired film is great to experiment with (or simply have "fun" with), but only after you got your workflow down knowing that everything is as it should be.

Enjoy the experience.
Remember to check that rewind knob is turning as you wind on to next exposure and to rewind before opening back!
A good photo book might help.

Thank you so much for all the help and advice you have all given me! I will take a good read of all the advice that was given when I return home
I'll have to try and remember all these little rules, maybe take a small notepad with me to write everything down
Haha I will eventually get a photobook once my pictures taking skills are better...developed OneDrive will have to do for now haha

I did receive my pictures the other day and have attached a few of them. From what I can see, they are a little blurry and most are a little underexposed; most probably could have done with a slower shutter speed.

[kb244]

Sometimes the blur is from camera shake, since the general 'minimum' handheld speed is usually 1 over the focal length. (i.e.: 50mm lens, 1/60 shutter in theory is fast enough to remove blur from the camera movement being handheld). Though I usually like to keep it a stop up from that (i.e.: 1/125 if I'm using a 50mm), just have to make sure aperture can open up to expose it.

Are you shooting manually, or in Program/Auto? If program/Auto if you're consistently getting slight underexposure from the scene you can use the manual exposure lock on the side of the lens mount to meter off a slightly darker area of the frame (since the meter is center weighted) and then re-frame your composition with the locked exposure reading.

The brighter overcast sky is probably what's causing the meter to read higher, so when you take a reading you can point down a little towards the shadow or compensate for it yourself if shooting manually (either open up the shutter or aperture brighter/slower).

Honestly though you're doing quite well for a first roll test, especially with first time with film on a manual focus camera. (The ducks on the docks is the only one I could notice that seemed more like focusing near rather than say camera shake or depth of field).

[pathdoc]

You nailed the horse perfectly IMO, so the ingredients to get it right are definitely there.

Exposure is generally good, and making it any brighter would in most of these shots be a matter of taste (the one of the birch trees is the only one I think could have done with a bit more light; any others that are darkish seem to match the generally overcast background, and are probably as you perceived them at the time). One or two of your distant horizons could have been a bit straighter.

My impression is that you need to work on focus a little more (e.g. the shot of the ducks). This will come with practice, and God only knows I mess this up often enough if I'm trying to rush the shot! If you wear glasses, make sure your view through the finder is sharp and that you're not struggling to agree with the camera.

Picture #2 feels to me like you pushed the boundaries of minimum focal distance a bit too much, and/or possibly needed either a tripod or a faster shutter speed. If you don't already have one, even a cheap garage-sale tripod would make a huge difference to such pictures. Alas this series of cameras wasn't always fitted with a screw-in point for a cable release, or I would suggest you get one of those too.

[Nuno Almeida]

It has a timer though