O Wise Listers, I blushingly appeal to you:
On retrieving my beginner's, erm, 'efforts' from the lab (Houston
Photo Imaging), I was handed a spool containing the remains of two
Kodak T-Max 100 rolls. They were both perfectly clear and featureless
as if unexposed, save for half an inch of black negative past the 'XX'
marks. The Kodak film information appears clearly in the edges.
The lab guy did not look in the least bothered. He behaved as if I had
handed in two unexposed rolls. Well, I did not.
I distinctly remember going through the two lost rolls with the
OM-4Ti, walking in Paris on an overcast winter day with sunny
intervals, aiming a Zuiko 35-70mm F/4 or a Zuiko 50mm F/1.8 at
appealing, reasonably static or slow-moving subjects. It was just
above freezing and I kept the camera either in the bag or semi-muffled
in my jacket when not in use. Batteries were fresh.
The subjects were not uniformly white, the emulsion speed was, I
think, set correctly at least for some frames (yeah, I got taken by
that exposure correction knob gotcha several times), the winding knob
was rotating, the mirror could be heard slapping away, I'm assuming
the shutter curtains did their trick, I imagine the diaphragm in the
lens did not mysteriously stop down to f/16 while the shutter just as
mysteriously raced at 1/2000th, I used automatic exposure on some
frames, manual on others, I used spot metering and I used
center-weighted averaging, the lens cap sure was off, and I did get to
rewind those rolls when each was finished and popped them dutifully
into their little canisters.
And, of course, the camera performed normally with a bunch of other
rolls on a bunch of other occasions during that same trip and
thereafter and I have no complaints save those connected to my own
lack of skills (incorrect exposures, low speed shots handheld,
over-wide framing due to my lack of familiarity with the OM-4
viewfinder, poor DOF and focusing choices with two subjects in one
frame, beginner stuff).
Interestingly, only the T-Max rolls were affected. All of the Ilford
B&W and the color negatives came out -- almost -- OK. The labsters
managed to slice into several frames. They separated the tail ends of
several rolls and grouped them in a single preserver. The PrintFile
preservers show quite a few marks and scratches, too. The contacts
were made with the negatives inside the preservers, have lines from
the preservers, and show white specks in places. Plus, nothing ever
looks really sharp. Worse -- correct me if I'm wrong -- a good number
of contact sheets are dark and look underexposed, with a complete loss
of shadow detail available in the negatives. In quite a few cases, it
does not look as if frames of very brighly lit scenes needed to be
accommodated on the same sheet. Even so, they could have used two
exposures and duplicated contacts where appropriate. A typical example
is an Ilford FP4 Plus evening shot by tungsten light through a Zuiko
40mm 2.0 used wide open, yielding a frame where the darkish blue
chenille scarf over a black wool sweater has vanished although its
detail is visible in the negative -- in a sheet where all the shots
are low-light. In another sheet, outdoor photos of a graveyard on a
sunny late winter afternoon are gloomy to invisible as if taken during
a brewing storm or at nightfall. Etc.
Where did I do wrong, O Listers? Could the lab have confused the fixer
and the developer for the negative? Used an incorrect mix for the
emulsion? (The destroyed (or unexposed, yeah) Kodak rolls are numbered
0006 and 0007; the Ilford rolls 0008 through 0015. The color negatives
were processed separately of course.
I'm just a beginner, but I have trouble accepting the idea of
unfathomable user error or one-off major camera malfunction affecting
just those two rolls, both with the same emulsion. Especially with
badly cut negatives and mostly unusable contact sheets, for which I
was charged mucho dinero.
Phil
===
(The fledgling Zuikomaniac formerly known as Humbert Humbert)
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