Olympus XA and x-pro

This is a photo taken in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. On King's day we decided to escape the crazy and take the train into Inge's home town. She and her husband gave us a tour of this beautiful city. While we were there she gave me an Olympus XA that she'd picked up at a camera swap and some Afga Precisa slide film.  I was so excited! 

This camera is so fun. It will be something I go to again and again, I'm sure. 

However, I am still uncertain about cross processing slide film. It seems like whenever I do it my experience is less than stellar. None of my photos look like this. I'm never blown away by the results. My feeling is more of frustration. I think it is that I am having trouble scanning cross processed negatives. my scanner's software does odd things to the colors and I'm not tech savvy enough to figure out how to fix that. 

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Taken on a foggy day at Mt Tabor in Portland Oregon. You could barely see the reservoir. Here is another image taken at the same time with an SLR. I kind of like whatever is going on with the numbers here. I am not sure what happened. The film was expired. It was a happy accident. 

Camera: Zero 2000
Exposure time:15 seconds
Film: Fuji Velvia 50
Pinhole: 0.18mm
Focal Length: 25mm
ISO: 50
Aperture: f138
Dev: C-41 by Lab x-proed
Scan: Epson V500

Sometimes the inexplicable happens

One day last summer my friend Inge alerted me and some other friends to a contest from Fluster Magazine. It was a film swap contest and she thought that I would be interested in participating. She was right (as you might have guessed). I was very interested. So I filled out the form so I could be partnered with a swap buddy. My buddy was a woman from Singapore and she would be the first shooter. I was really excited at the prospect of collaborating with someone from Singapore! However, two weeks went by and I didn’t hear a word from her. The person in charge of the contest emailed me to check in and I told her that my partner hadn’t gotten in touch yet so she said she would connect me with someone else.

A couple of days later I got a message from my friend Brendan. He said that his Swappa partner didn’t work out and they randomly partnered him with a person named Moni from the USA (me). I thought he was joking. I thought this was his funny way of asking to do another filmswap and so  I went along with the joke. My initial assumption was that his Swappa buddy didn’t work out and he was the first shooter, so he had this film swap roll needing a home (crazy how the mind works at  5:30 in the morning). Eventually it became clear that this was no joke. And, indeed, I checked my email and there was something from the organizer introducing Brendan and I as Swappa buddies and giving us instruction on what to do.

So yeah. That was weird.

It just so happens that three of our photos made it into the finals and are in a book.You can preview and purchase the book here.

Here are some of the results from our swap. They turned out really great. My shots were taken at Timberline Lodge and the Japanese Garden in PDX and his in and around Dublin, Ireland.

Welcome to Narnia

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I went for a very foggy walk on Mt. Tabor in Portland last Monday and had lots of fun with my cameras! Here is one of my shots. I also brought along my new Canon EOS Elan ii. I am running a roll of black and white film through it to make sure it is working properly. I really can’t wait to see the results of those photos as well.

This photo, delightfully, has made Explore on Flickr. The last I checked it was #75. I know. I am a dork. It’s a nice ego boost. What can I say. It’s also nice that something other than over processed HDR makes it into Flickr Explore once in awhile. Power to the Pinhole!

Camera: Zero 2000
Exposure time: 1 minute 15 seconds
Film: Fuji Velvia 50
Pinhole: 0.18mm
Focal Length: 25mm
ISO: 50
Aperture: f138
Dev: C-41 by Lab x-proed
Scan: Epson V500

Cross processed pinhole

Exposure time: 16 seconds.

Exposure time: 16 seconds.

Yesterday, during a brief Facebook discussion on a friend’s status, I was pointed to this tip on scanning cross processed negatives by Herschel from Squarepegpinhole.com. I immediately needed to try it out on some x-proed pinhole shots I took last fall that I wasn’t super thrilled with.

The tip: scan cross processed slide film as positive and then invert in your photo processing software. I have Lightroom which is a bit tricky. A bit of Googling helped meand I was able to do this in Lightroom quite easily.

This was a shot that I wasn’t happy with originally. It was very over exposed and way too contrasty. I couldn’t even make out what it was, actually. I am pleased with how this came out! I am still not convinced that cross processing is the be all and end all, but it is fun to play with now and then.

Camera: Zero 2000
Exposure time: 16 seconds
Film: Mystery Fuji slide film
Pinhole: 0.18mm
Focal Length: 25mm
ISO: 100
Aperture: f138
Dev: C-41 by Lab – cross processed
Scan:Epson V500 – scanned as positive and inverted in Lightroom