His Mind Is Not For Rent

I am looking to start a photography-centric blog, so I, naturally, went out and bought as much film as Meijer had in stock last night.


Today, I took off work for a bit and went for a walk in Central Park, and along a couple of nice places in Carmel, IN.  I had 3 cameras and 3 36 exposure rolls of Fuji 200 speed film.


I did a roll in my Nikon Nikkormat FS, Minolta SRT-101 and SRT-102.  I DID NOT, however, have my Nikon D40x digital camera with me so that I could set up the lenses correctly to account for the dreary, foggy day so I was literally eyeballing it with 3 cameras operating in completely mechanical mode. The Nikon doesn't have anything electrical in it at all, and the Minoltas use a battery exclusively for the light meter.  But said battery is mercury-based, so no longer available and I don't have anything else in the slot to sort of work with.


So, with that in mind, these pictures may or may not come out super great at all.  I haven't bought film for a very long time, and the last time I sent any off to be developed was August of 2017.  I have maybe 10 rolls of who knows what sitting around the house that I shot mostly in October of 2017. Also, the SRT-101 may have had a light leak...The back was not fully closed.  I'll find out next week, I guess.


Anyway, I realized something about my style today. With the digital camera I'm basically all over the place. Most of what I take comes out looking pretty good, with the occasional bit of junk.  I feel like I experience the adventure almost exclusively through the viewfinder.  Today with the 35mm cameras I was actually more engaged in my adventure even though it was for the sole purpose of using a roll of film in each camera.  Yes, I was taking pictures left, right, up and down (literally!), but I was focusing on my surroundings (pun was unintentional for once) and trying to get a feel for the world that I was trying to take photos of.  Those +/- 108 exposures took me longer to get through than any 108 exposures I have taken in any of the years since I got my D40x.  That is no bad thing!  I've gotten too swept up in the digital photography mindset.


In some ways my skills have improved, in some ways I have gotten lazy.  I've known that for years, but today was the first time I actually took note of it in any sort of meaningful way.


Anyway, I sent off the film today for processing.  I will patiently wait for the day it returns in it's developed form so I can scan it and start my series of "A roll with..." posts on both here and wherever my next blog ends up!