Sunday, September 10, 2017

A work in progress.

Acros in the Foth Derby produced only a couple images at the end of the roll I thought to be of acceptable quality. Most of the others were kind of fuzzy and low contrast, and four in the middle featured a broad, blank stripe. I haven't fully sorted out the issues, but I suspect I did a poor job of rolling up the film in the backing paper. I think the film buckled and interfered with the travel of the focal plane shutter curtains.


Albuquerque and New Mexico are still struggling to get beyond of the 2008 financial collapse.  The Intel plant which gave the local economy a boost in the beginning of the century is down to a skeleton crew.  The city's main industry at this point seems to be tattoo parlours.


Rude Boy offers a varied menu.  I'm going to take a pass on Tuesdays, which appear to feature a dead cockroach.  The coffee shops and restaurants around UNM which cater to the local student crowd seem to be surviving the disruption of the rapid transit construction on Central Ave., but many of the other businesses are on shaky ground.

6 comments:

astrobeck said...

Nice and sharp optics and great contrast on these.
I hope to see more...if the re-rolling is not too much trouble.
The camera has some charm!

JR Smith said...

How many tattoos can people possibly get?

Technical problems aside, this film seems a good fit for this camera. The shot of the tattoo parlor has a timeless quality. I like it when you really can't tell when a photo was taken and this one really freezes time for me.

Mike said...

It looks like I need to set my film slitter to add about another millimeter to the film width. It is hard to be completely sure about the kind of issue I am seeing, but I did have what seemed to be the same problem when I was using 35mm film in the camera some time ago. I'll probably just shoot another roll made from my bulk Portra to compare results. The Acros film stock seems quite a bit thinner and more flexible than the Portra, so that may be a contributing factor as well.

Jim Grey said...

Who knew that rolling your own could have so many potential pitfalls. And I just can't imagine buying a cookie from a shop named Rude Boy.

Mike said...

I'm kind of a clumsy craftsman. It is probably not as hard as I make it look.
The flip side is that I do try to aim high in my aspirations for my old cameras. My assumption is that there were few cameras made which could not produce excellent images when they were new. It is an irritant to me to see people running a single roll of film through an old camera without giving any attention to restoration and then presenting the predictably awful images as representing the best that the camera is capable of producing.

Jim Grey said...

I think it is your high aim, especially when you hit your target, that makes your blog remain compelling. "Wow, he got *that* image from *that* camera?"

Perhaps as I head into the empty-nest years, I'll have more time to do basic restoration of the old cameras that find their way into my hands.