I've just gotten my films back from Peak Imaging - amazingly fast! I can't believe how quickly they got them back (we're actually still inside the 2nd class window for them receiving them in the first place, at time of writing)
And, £30 for six films isn't too painful when I stop and think about it. Or indeed, when I stop and don't think about it! :-D
Having had a flip through the negatives, I've noticed a couple of things:
+ The light meter on my / the K1000 is excellent - all the shots seem to be correctly exposed, very evenly across all the films/lighting conditions. It's encouraging to know that I can actually trust it!
+ I've got a Praktica MTL-5 that I won sort-of-by-accident on eBay for £5 - when I got it, I noticed the light seal on the inside of the film door was in very poor condition, and true enough, there's a gentle light leak on the left of the frame. Also, the meter must be either more, or perhaps less centre weighted than the K1000. It would appear that I got the metering wrong on quite a few of the shots - albeit they were in challenging light (under shade but towards the setting sun). It's a learning process! I haven't scanned them all in yet and some look good, so maybe it was just that one time. Maybe expired Kodak film doesn't like strong sunlight...!
+ The film I shot on my
other film camera, a Mamiya ZM, looks reasonably well exposed but slightly /reasonably under exposed, like from the Praktica. This is possibly where the expired film has become less sensitive, although it's interesting that the K1000 shots seem okay in terms of exposure. I guess we'll see when I get them all scanned in.
+ The shots from the Ilford B&W film look awesome!
I was opening the package and looking through the negatives sitting on the floor in my spare room and getting unreasonably excited by all this stuff. This is why I love film - there's something so honest about the process. It makes me excited to make, receive and work with images in a way that digital doesn't - even the 'failures' where I missed the exposure, become an opportunity for learning how to take photographs in those lighting conditions, rather than an opportunity to check the LCD and take another few shots.
Magical. I may even post some shots up here, if you're lucky and if I get around to it..! (It takes me a long time to turn stuff around ...) ;-)
---------- Post added 05-21-14 at 09:19 AM ----------
Originally posted by chickentender Point of the Arches, 1965
shot by my father with his Nikomat on Ektachrome circa 1965, Shi Shi Beach, WA
scanned with the PIE PrimeFilm XE, and as usual looks much better on Flickr.
This is really quite marvellous - what a beautiful photograph! The colour and light is so smooth and even. A beautiful image - I really love it.