Kickin' It Old School
SoCal Spring Cosplay Picnic Pictures!
Yes... frighteningly fast, because I took 39 pictures total. Easy to filter - 90% got posted. I shot only on film, using cameras ~1, ~40, and ~75 years old - Holga, Pentax SP1000, and Agfa PD16 Readyset.
Pentax SP1000
It's a 35mm SLR and has OK lenses. (50/2, 70-150/3.8) I've probably taken hundreds of pictures with this camera since I indefinitely borrowed in from my grandfather in high school. It's the only camera I have at the moment that can meter properly. (center weighted only)
I wanted to try slide film, since I heard it scans well. First try was at Mikomicon, which ended up being cross-processed by CVS. So this roll I took to Bel Air Camera to be confident they'd do it right. (unfortunately at 3x the price x.x) They're shot on Fujifilm Sensia 200, which is apparently no out of print. Which is sort of sad since I really like the look the the results. Though Wikipedia indicates Astia is pretty much the same thing? (But isn't Astia low-contrast? This seems more low-ish medium contrast.)
Holga
I modded my Holga so it operates at ~f/6 and ~f/14. (Base model is ~ f/10 or something) At f/6, it yields extremely soft focus. Typically I've avoided that setting, but this time I decided to embrace it.
These are shot on Kodak Portra 160NC (negative film). I thought the NC film might yield a nice pastel look. It didn't quite do what I wanted - it's really not sufficient contrast/saturation for pictures like these, so all thee of those are post-processed a bit - duplicate layer set to Overlay, with opacity adjusted.
I did take some at f/14-ish too. Which is still kinda glowy when high contrast is involved:
Agfa PD16 Readset
I borrowed this camera from my gandfather two months ago, mainly to lend to itsuka as a prop for Fatal Frame cosplay. It's not designed for any currently marketed film. I understand it's best suited for respooled 70mm movie film. I just used paper towels to make 120 film fit. The image size is about 63mm x 106mm, which means I have to advance about 3 645-size frame numbers per shot - only 5 images per roll.
I loaded the camera with Kodak Ektar 100 which the high-contrast, low-grain film. (Not that any modern film would have notable grain with such a large image size.) The choice was based on understanding that the camera is fixed at about 1/50 f/14, making it's ideal sunny film ~ iso 64. But the only < iso100 film out there is B&W, which costs too much to develop since I don't have my own supplies for that anymore. Internet people seem to feel Ektar 100 is best over exposed a bit when used for scanning. So, treating it like iso 64 seems preferred.
It was my first try with the camera, and I didn't get very good results, but I did learn a lot.:
- It's very susceptible to lens flare, and not really cool-looking flare either. (non-posted picture of fattastik ended up being 30% lens flare)
- It's even lower contrast than the plastic holga lens. (Well, it is old...)
- It's fixed-focus at I guess its hyperfocal distance. To be in focus, the narrower part of the frame, should cover an area of at least 5 feet. (i.e. this is too close)
- It's very prone to camera shake. I figured I'm fine with 1/50, but I think the fact that the shutter button is on the lens and not on the body probably worsens the effect. All the pictures I took had some. this was otherwise decent except the significant shake.
Here's one picture from it that I do consider reasonably successful:
Photography wasn't a key part of the event for me. Mostly it was about catching up with people. And to that end, it went pretty well. And now I'm extra psyched for Fanime.