Shots in the dark

Well, the wait is over. Actually, it was partially over a week ago when a woman from Walgreens called to tell me the roll of film I sent in for processing contained no exposures. Nothing to pick up, no charge. She called again Tuesday, Aug. 24, to inform me the second roll was back and there were "lots of exposures" on this one. As it turns out, the 36-exposure roll netted 37 images. Not bad.

Looking out from Reckless Records
on MadisonStreet in Chicago.
Roll No. 1 was shot with the vintage Rollei 35s, metered with an app on my iPhone. To be honest, I'm not sure the shutter was operating properly; there was no audible difference between an exposure at 1/15 and 1/500 of a second. 

Roll No. 2 went through the much newer and auto-everything Canon Sure Shot Z135. I carried it in my car for a few days and photographed a couple of roadside scenes of no consequence. I took pictures in the yard and around the house. I toted the Z135 on our trip to Central Camera in Chicago to deliver a donation of camera and darkroom gear (more on that another time). 

The images aren't great. The exposures are OK, but many seem dark. And being 800 speed film, they're grainy. But for 20-year-old film that sat in a dorm fridge for a decade or more and then lingered in the stuffy heat of the abandoned darkroom of The Register-Mail for who knows how long, the results were surprisingly good.

Central Camera
owner Don Flesch
was kind enough to
take a photo of me
and my wife, Susan.

Next up, I'll send off a roll of Kodak 620 film that was in the Brownie Hawkeye that came with the house we bought two years ago. Half of the roll was through the camera when I inherited it; I finished it with odd shots around the house. The exciting part is, I have three new rolls, recently purchased at Central Camera, to try out in it. 

I like to photograph big city architecture, but I don't
really know what I'm doing.

Bicycle crash in the backyard.

Our Yorkie, Cimarron, a.k.a Sir Didymus, is a mop.



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