So retro

Here we are in early 2022, with the first month nearly over. Time is still zooming by. And I don't mean that in reference to Zoom calls. 

In my spare moments I'm chewing through a thick book about aging and delaying the consequences thereof.  There's good bits, but it isn't (so far) quite what I thought it would be. The next couple books after that are not so thick. I'll probably blog about them all, stay tuned.

We like putting things on hold at the library, and it's like a birthday when they actually come in. Some of them take a really long time. We waited nearly a year each for Good Omens and American Gods. I was sure I'd watched a bit of Veronica Mars from 2004 on one of the streaming services, but then I couldn't find it later when both of us wanted to try it out. This was mainly on the strength of The Good Place. So we put it on hold and it actually came in pretty quickly. We're halfway through the first season. All I can say is her character is one talented 'kid'. Normally I have no interest in shows involving high school, and a few times with this I'm rolling my eyes, but there's some good lines.

What was I doing in 2004 when it was on air? I was still new at Skystone.  It was my first salaried permanent job (or as  permanent as jobs get in oil and gas) and was hustling hard to make a good impression. I'd spent much of the 90's as a long term temp for Nova, then Amoco, then BP Amoco (pronounced BP, the Amoco is silent), then BP. At the time we didn't have cable TV and still don't. I don't think we'd even bought our plasma TV and first DVD player.  Certainly keeping track of current TV shows was not on my radar.

One of the fun things about watching older shows is the technology on display. How quickly things change! VM is all about the flip phones, and how quaint they seem now. VM's camera gear looks surprisingly good for early digital, though the one scene was mirror imaged so it looked like she was shooting the camera left handed. Yes, I've been known to pause and rewind to see what camera or lens is being used in a scene. Nobody complaining about guys being in the girls bathroom she seems to use like an office makes me wonder a bit, considering how wound up they are about other stuff.

We have to binge the series because Mad Men is in transit to our library. I've had that one on hold since forever. No idea if I'll like it, but lots of people say it's really good. We're looking forward to seeing one of the actors from Good Omens, and another from Elementary, show up. I like playing the game of seeing someone in a show, and trying to remember where I've seen them before. Which sometimes leads to a bit of a mind snap, if they're spaced out, and we saw the later one first. Like Kristen Bell first in The Good Place, then Veronica Mars.

In more recent viewing (see Of the Day below), the film camera was in Empress, SK, during the trip to Oyen. We were there for a bathroom break, and to see what was there. There isn't much to see. Standing in the middle of main street for a while to take the two photos was not a problem, even taking the time to play with the settings and focuss.

As I look at the two Empress photos, I could believe the community hall is still in use. However the hardware store across the road is not and has not been for some time. Someone owned it. Do they still have to pay business taxes? Or did the owner die and not leave it to anyone and the town owns it now? Presumably there's a story there.

I was out yesterday along Fish Creek and found some nice reflections and river scenes, one of which I hope made it's way onto film. I'm going to be trying to get out with the film camera more regularly. From an earlier walk I found this bit of fungus and spent some time figuring out how to get this shot. I had the film camera with me, but seeing how many digital shots it took and still not being sure it worked, I didn't even try. 

Of the Day

Driftwood

Peony

Lily

Film, both lightly edited. I've decided that since back in the day, people making prints from negatives edited their work through burning and dodging and other tricks, I think it's fair to tweak my film photos. However, I'm not going all out on this. 

Film results to date

I finally finished off the second roll of film. Those just joining the party need to know that I've been wanting to try shooting film for a while. Sean generously loaned me a couple 35mm film cameras and several lenses. I've been using an FM2 with a 50 mm lens, and the colour film is Ecktar 100. There are several shots I'm quite pleased with here. (Let's not talk about the first roll, but then, I didn't have high expectations.)

This chunk of driftwood was in Carburn park, shot 2021-10-21 with both film and digital. I shot the digital version first, then the film, trying to get similar shots, with the intent of seeing what the overall differences might be. I was hoping to see the 'look' of film. Now, I wasn't trying to be scientific or anything. There are too many variables to have any hope of a rigorous comparison. Besides, that ship has sailed long ago.

We know that current digital cameras easily match or surpass 35mm film in resolution and ease of use. People shoot film now because they enjoy the process, or they can get that film 'look', whatever it is. Maybe it's like runner's high. Even after a decade of running I never had it. Swimming, maybe.

Here's the film, scanned by the lab (which can introduce a multitude of sins), imported into Lightroom, then exported with no further processing. The original file size is 1.7MB, should anyone want to know. My notes say ISO 100, f1.8, 1/250 second, about noon on a sunny day.

Here is that same file, processed in Lightroom exactly as if I was editing a digital file, not trying to make it look like the digital. Exported exactly the same way I export digital files. As I look at it more, I'm thinking there is a slight green cast to the image.

Here's the original digital file. Normally I don't fuss about settings, but ISO 200, f5.6, 1/125 second

Here is the digital file as I edited it then.

I also got prints done because they were cheap and I was curious. Not gonna take a photo of a print and show you that. I think their process is to develop the negative, scan it, then print from the scan. To my eye the scans look very similar to the photos. I think next time I'll just do the scans. If there's something I like so much that I want to print it, I'll just get it rescanned at a higher resolution, up to whatever the max is for that film, and print that.

The digital file appears that the temperature has been shifted slightly more yellow, which is a typical thing for me to do. But otherwise, if you were to show the two edited photos to someone, I don't think they'd obviously be able to tell which was film and which was digital. At least I can't at this photo size, which is 2048 px wide . Given that the digital file is 6240 x 4160 px, and the film as scanned is 3024 x 2005, I think the film version would start to pixilate much sooner than the digital version if I tried to display or print it big.  

Then again, I could find a drum scanner, pay through the nose, and scan the negative at a similar resolution to digital. But if you start going down that road you have to start thinking about the quality of the camera lens and exactly how good your technique is, and lots of other things, and you're well down a rabbit hole. Then think about what the point is. Who is going to look at a photo that closely?

I had another pair of shots, done in the basement of the Hoosier school. However, I screwed up the focus on the film shot, so it's useless for comparison. Focus is the thing I struggled with the most while shooting film, missing 4 out of 36, and that was taking my time. A couple of them might have been because the shutter speed was too slow, but that's still my fault. 

There are several other shots that are similar, but are not even as close a match as this pair is. I don't think I'll do any more of the comparison shots, since it doesn't really tell me anything. If there's a particular 'look' to the film shot, as opposed to the digital shot, I'm missing it. 

The cost of film was about $17 to buy the film roll, and about $30 to get the negative developed, scanned, and 4x6 prints done. So about $1.50 per photo. It took a week because the machine at the Heritage London Drugs is broken. If I'd known that in advance I'd have gone to the one near Signal Hill, which is probably a bit closer, but I'm not used to thinking of it that way.

Once I'm done the 2 more rolls of colour, and 2 rolls of B&W, while I continue? Good question. Stay tuned.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Peony

For anyone that is interested in why the red tinges toward magenta, here's a link for you. Short answer for me is, under expose the red more, and boost the shadows in everything else.

Lily

Film

A new feature with scans from 35 mm film. I'm still thinking about what editing such photos should have in Lightroom. This is the photo as scanned, of a barn in the middle of nowhere on the way to Oyen.

Same photo, with Lightroom editing.

Three from a road trip

You might remember that Sean and I took an overnight road trip last November to visit some red rocks near Medicine Hat. Here and here. After breakfast we headed home again, stopping now and then.

The first two were taken from essentially the same location, with me loving the skies. I'm thinking now that I'd like to see a long exposure shot of these for comparison, to see how the clouds would look smeared by the wind. Sometimes it looks good, sometimes it's a mess. Pity I didn't think of it at the time.

From a gas station on the Siksika nation. This is a 'not quite' shot. In other circumstances we might have looked for a better version of it, or waited for the light, but we were tired and wanted to get home. 

I'm looking back through photos over the last year and realized there's still a bunch from the Writing on Stone road trip that have not been blogged yet. Maybe next time.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Peony

Lily, plus a 5x serendipity

Downtown one morning from November 2016.

The view I used to get when heading out of town back in mid June 2017.

The view from my cabin Sundog Retreat in Yukon September 2017.

A bench somewhere along the Bow river, I think near Parkdale, September 2017. 

The night sky from west of Calgary, looking south, February 2018.

And at last, the lilies.

FC, B9, again

As you might know if you're a regular reader, I'm into Fish Creek Park a lot for photos. It's huge, the terrain ranges from flat and open to heavily treed and extremely rugged. From the west end of the park, wild animals can walk to the Rockies without encountering any built up areas, and only have to cross two roads, one gravel with little traffic, and highway 22. I've seen all kinds of deer and birds, foxen, coyotes, and there's been bear warnings, but I've never seen one. I'd love to get a good shot of a beaver, and I know they are active in the park, just hard to spot. The deer seem relaxed around people, but the beavers are more cautious. Perhaps they haven't forgotten how their ancestors were slaughtered during the Great Beaver Hunts of Canada's early history.

Fish Creek is kind of my go to place when I want to take photos but don't have a specific place to go. There's so much space, so much to see, in all different times of the year, that I don't think I'll ever exhaust the possibilities. I love walking along and trying to remember what's to be seen from the various side trails. If I can't remember, then it's detour time.

Over the weekend I dropped into the area near bridge 9. There's some spaces south and east from it that I haven't been into during winter. It was a beautiful day for a walk, although most of it was not photographically interesting. But there were 3 shots I liked.

I saw this as B&W right from the start, and hoped the texture of the bark would come through. I should have tweaked the settings for a wider depth of field.

Following a path and suddenly the light was lovely! Click. A few seconds later it was gone. I've been to this spot during the early summer before the slough dries up, and there are some lovely reflections to be had.

Normally I'm not a bird guy. But this little woodpecker caught my attention, and was a bit of a flirt. If I'd had a camera full of other images I probably would have kept on going, but what you see above are pretty much it. So I paused and clicked. No, I don't know what kind of a woodpecker it is.

Last night I got around to watching the documentary The Sparks Brothers. I was fortunate enough to be clued into them back in high school, and loved their first albums. Yes, they've been producing music since the very early 70's. No, you've probably never heard of them, or did briefly and then lost track. Let's just say they are an acquired taste.

I was struck by the point made, that they never wrote music to match current taste, or what might be commercially popular. They wrote what appealed to them, and didn't much care if some of their audience didn't like it. They didn't want to produce the same music over and over, for all they say that have only two songs, a fast one and a slow one, and just keep changing the lyrics. In fact, they have released 26 studio albums, 1 live album, and several hundred songs.

They had a bit of a dry spell in the early 90's, at least as far as the public was concerned. But they hunkered down in a home studio, and worked on music. Every day, all day. They had a routine. Many people think of rock stars as coming up with a hit song in a drug-fueled haze, and that's probably true for at least a few, but at least some are hard working artists. Ron and Russel Mael are the hard working sort. They were doing what they loved to do. That many people didn't know what to think of what they were doing wasn't their problem.

It got me thinking about my photography, and where I want to take it. There's some ideas percolating, and I need to start doing the work to express them. It's never right the first time, but there has to be a first time. Something to look at to better understand what needs to change. It just has to be done. First steps and all.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Peony

Lily

2 related images

Both are the same lily, taken a few seconds apart from slightly different places. The two photos do very different things in my eyes. The first was shot against the sky with the idea of highlighting the structure of the petals. The second was to capture the colour and a more 3D shape against the background of the other garden beds. My general thoughts about shooting flowers is to do it in natural light, no reflectors, and no artificial backdrop cheats to get a white or black background. Thus one usually sees an out of focus background of green or other flowers in my shots. There are times I've thought I should get a sun shade, but then I'd need someone to hold it, or bring out a C stand to mount it. Maybe this summer...

An assortment

An assortment of what, you ask? I can see that some of my readers are apprehensive, having previously experienced some of my assortments. One never knows, including me.

We were in the deep freeze for the better part of a month, producing photos like this.

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Then a chinook blew in, producing photos like this. Chinooks being good for sky photos.

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I need to run some errands a bit later today, and I think I'll take the camera to see what I can discover. My "unblogged" photo list from the last 3 months is down to 62, and some of them aren't going to be blogged. Not a lot of choice. Time to get more.

The chinook has been warm enough that I shovelled a path to the BBQ in the morning, and by lunchtime, the ice had melted off the patio stones. Some chicken was the first thing on the grill, and the next day some bison burgers. Both times it was T shirt weather, albeit surrounded by snow and the sounds of melt water. Today might well be rack of lamb. 

The basement re-org project took a big step forward yesterday. IKEA finally got the 50cm wide side posts for the IVAR in stock. I moved a bunch of stuff that's been sitting there for decades, and set it up. That gives us 4 x 50 x 170 cm = 3.4 M2 more storage space than we had. The difficulty in organizing space that's already full, is that you have to make space somewhere else, which is likely already full. Or put it where it blocks something else at least temporarily. 

16. A Celina serendipity from 2017.

17. The new storage space, destined to be filled with Linda craft supplies. Or gardening stuff. Whatever.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Peony

Lily