Justfolk's photos

I just developed this roll of film which was shot two years ago, in March of 2012, and I cannot remember precisely the kind of camera that Kat, at left, had around her neck. I think it was a Pentax K1000. In her hand is the heavy Mamiya C220 I have in the office. Kat was visiting her friend Jules, on the right, from thousands of miles away and Jules said she should meet me because we could talk cameras. That's what we did do. There were four friends together (Amy and another Kat in between); I had them all squeeze in so I could take their picture together. This was on 1990s-era Tri-X in my Mamiya U. I developed the film yesterday in some leftover T-Max developer that I opened in 2002. It keeps well.

The spring equinox is only three hours away; we'll officially be in the spring season then. But the temperature is still below freezing. Days like the one in this picture seem pretty distant. This was two summers ago, late July 2012, but I have only now developed the film. It was Tri-X in my Minolta Hi-Matic 7sii. There is a lot of nice stuff written about the 7sii but I've never really liked mine. The lens is very soft, and especially so at the open apertures I tend to use. The Tri-X was film I bought in the mid- or late 1990s. I've still got a half-dozen rolls of b&w film from that period. Scanned (Epson V700) from the negative, with curves adjustments (and border) in Paint Shop Pro X5.

This was after a delicious supper with a bunch of old friends. Using colour film in low light often makes me want to turn the pictures into black-and-white ones. That was the case with this shot, originally on Fujicolor 200 in my Olympus 35DC, a nice little fixed-lens rangefinder with a fast lens. I used a couple of different colour filters (in PSP X5) to get different tonal gradations in various parts of the picture. I should be using Tri-X again. Or something slower -- the tones and grain here remind me of Plus-X, though it's not nearly as sharp as I'd have expected from that late, lamented film.

This was taken a year ago. It looks nothing like this now as we have had little mild weather this March. Of course it looked little like this last year, too, since this picture is a result of shooting 25-year-old film in a 126 camera. Somewhat distorted representation of reality. Kodacolor VR-G (expired April 1989) in Yashican E-Z matic.

It's a rare bird in this town, a sidewalk having been ploughed in the winter. Kodak Colorplus 200 in Konica Eye2.

Another from a roll of Kodak Colorplus 200 in the Konica Eye2

Slavi dropped by to talk about place-names. We discovered a mutual interest in camera and he let me take his picture. This was Colorplus Kodak 200 in the Konica Eye2. A little cropped at the top; dodged & burned all over.

Olympus XA; Kodak Colorplus 200.

This was a week ago when it was a dozen degrees below zero (Celcius). (Nearly) monochrome season. Kodak Colorplus 200 in Olympus XA.

I went to school for the first eight years of my education in this neighbourhood. My school is just across the intersection that is immediately to the left of this picture. My father was an electrician, among other things. I wonder if that's why I *like* pictures of power lines. Kodak Colorplus 200 film in Olympus XA

I went to school at this corner. The school I went to from Kindergarten until Grade Seven is just out of sight here to the right. So this is a very familiar neighbourhood. Where Lawlor's is now, there was an old-fashioned "groc & conf" shop when I was a boy. I spent a lot of the money earned on my paper route in that shop. A grocery wholesaler was in the building painted with cow clouds. And my first barber had his shop across from there. This picture was taken from the third floor of a small office building that did not exist back then. It was built in a corner of the grounds of another school. Kodak 200 film in Olympus XA.

I own a lot of pocketknives. I started carrying them as a child and have never stopped. When my father died fifteen years ago, I inherited his. And over the years, I've found a couple in the street. That's how I got this one. It was fairly beat up from having been driven over through at least part of a winter but it serves its purpose, which is to be a tiny folding knife. Open, it is only ten cm long and folded less than six. It has a good blade, the base of which is seen here. This was another test of using a cheap plastic loupe as a close-up lens in front of a cheap 3MP digital camera (Olympus Camedia C3020). It's pretty good, and I'm going to try it some more.

This was an attempt to see what a cheap digital camera and a plastic loupe would do in copying a negative. The negative was a not-bad shot in a Nikon APS slr a couple of years ago. It had limitations to begin with -- it was on expired FNAC film, a film notorious for its lack of clarity. Nonetheless, this image wasn't bad in the original. I taped the negative (still in its plastic PrintFile sleeve) to a sheet of white paper which I taped to a north-facing window. The north window was chosen to avoid the sunlight that is streaming in the south-facing ones this morning. The texture in the image is largely the fibre patterning in the paper but probably has something to do with the plastic sleeve, too. I set the Olympus Camedia C3020 to its flower icon, meaning it was looking for close focus, and I simply held my little Agfa plastic loupe (8x) on the front of the camera's lens. With the flash turned off, I took this picture. Done that way I could hold the camera fairly steady for its 1/20 second exposure. I did very little in adjustment -- in Paint Shop Pro, I inverted the image colours and then adjusted the colour curves a little bit. Adjusting the loupe-to-lens distance (to gve bigger coverage of the negative), using a better negative to begin with, and using a less fibrous paper backing (or a proper light table) would all improve this result, if by "improvement" you mean making the image look more like something you'd taken originally in the same digital camera. But I like the introduction of shape distortion (pin-cushion distortion?), the textural quality, and the circular image.

It must have been a new grave since it was marked with only a handwritten wooden marker, but it was covered with fresh snow so I couldn't really tell. Someone had brought a large and beautiful vase with fresh flowers. It was a dark and blowy-snow day, and the temperature was minus 13 Celcius. The flowers could not have been there very long. Kodak Colorplus 200 in Konica Eye2.

Pearce Avenue is not a wide street. These days the city allows cars in only one direction. In winter that saves on ploughing effort. Kodak Colorplus 200 in Konica Eye2.

Some days look good. This one did. Konice Eye2; Kodak Colorplus 200 film.

Walking through one of the neighbouring graveyards, I saw this lamp shade. Kodak Colorplus 200 film in Konica Eye2.

This was four years ago; the following year a really high tide finally lifted the remains of that big wharf off its piers and carried it away. The high and low tides are called springes, though some people call the lowest tides, like this one, the nips. These two pictures were taken on expired Fuji Sensia slide film in the Rollei 35TE. In lining the pictures up for this, I had two big white areas that I very roughly faked image into. I didn't try very hard at that and, to reduce the appearance of fakery and joinery, I noised the edges of the picture substantially.