2021: 49 Fear and Loathing on Ebay

The life of a film photographer is sometimes an emotional minefield. The thrill of the “shoot and wait to see” process is often offset by soul crushing disappointment. Cameras are mis-loaded, film is exposed improperly, chemicals are exhausted… dust and scratches and fog, oh my. Add to the rollercoaster ride of emotions the pursuit of a working film camera. Sifting through Craigslist, thrift stores, yard sales and Ebay is a common pastime for film geeks. I experienced a bit of the bad end of the pursuit recently, and I’m still kinda pissed about it.

Why did I need to buy a 110 film camera? The bane of my existence in 7th grade, a shitty format that now seems so quaint and enticing. Fuck you, nostalgia. Lomography are like camera and film drug dealers to me. They are the only place to buy new 110 film cartridges. I bought a few rolls recently, not even owning a camera to shoot them with. So I jump on to Ebay, and hunt down a sporty, sexy old Minolta SLR zoom 110 camera. Yeah… a Rolls Royce of the tiny format. The camera looked good, was sold “as-is” but at a decent price. I rolled the dice. Of course, the anticipation of tracking a package from UPS is part of the thrill of buying something online. A 50 year old camera inching closer to my grubby hands. Of course, it arrived days after it was scheduled to be delivered. Of course, I opened the package immediately and popped batteries in and pressed the shutter. A weak, painfully slow reaction happened inside the camera…eventually I heard a faint click. No warning lights, no view to be seen through the viewfinder. Then…nothing. Nothing. In short, a lemon. A paperweight.

I decided since it wasn’t working anyway, I’d try to take it apart and fix it. Small, Phillips head screws held the body together. Simple to open up and poke around. Except that I am not at all mechanically inclined. My ten thumbs quickly dismantled the camera with no fucking way for me to even think of fixing it; never mind trying to put it all back together. In a fit of frustration, I threw the camera on the ground, where it burst into multiple pieces. I swept up the debris and threw it all in the dumpster. Case closed.

This is not the first time I threw money out the window on a non-functioning camera. My success rate is slightly over 50%, if I’m being honest. This one stung more than others though. Why? Was it that I bought into the hype over a format that was inferior when it first came out, swapping image quality for ease of loading and shooting? I scoffed when I heard Lomo was coming out with 110 film. And yet…and yet. So what do you do when you get burned by defeat? Do you walk home with your tail between your legs? Do you go home and cuddle with your Canon 6D, 23 megapixel lover who won’t break your heart? Or do you double down and fight against all odds to snatch victory from the jaws of 50 year old, dormant technology?

My new Minolta 110 slr zoom camera arrives in about a week.

2021:6 ...... Contact Sheets

My love of the photographic process reaches far back, as it probably does for most of us who toil in this practice. I have distinct memories of so many aspects of image making, that have wormed into my brain. Memories of things I hardly remember from long ago. Memories of the smell of a darkroom, memories of a print coming to life in a tray of developer. The feel of a roll of film in my hand, in complete darkness, as I fumble with a metal reel and tank. The smell of the inside of a film container, the plastic and latent silver scent intoxicating my young mind.

Recently, I was recalling an early memory that I had forgotten about, from many years ago. A childhood memory that laid buried in my brain, almost completely forgotten. Growing up in 1970s New Jersey I lived in a suburban, middle class town. Our entire neighborhood was populated with families with kids. So many kids, ages from pre-K to teens. We all interacted with little regard for any age-inflicted stratification. There was one particular house at the far end of our street, that a group of the older kids (teens) lived in. They were also part of the most liberal, progressive family on the block (in the 70s they were the “hippie” family.) The teens were, to my eyes, a bit wild… long hair and wire framed glasses, like John Lennon. One of the boys was also a photographer. Well, he owned a Nikon camera, that much I recall. One day he arrived in our driveway, showing off to me and my sisters, a mysterious sheet of black and white paper, with little rectangles of images on it. I didn’t comprehend really what it was, and where it came from. But I do remember being intrigued by a series of images, that looked like they told a little story. I think they were from some road trip, in upstate New York, perhaps. There were a few rectangles showing our neighbor urinating on the side of a road. I remember reacting in a confused manner to those few frames. Why would you take a picture of that? Thirty six little pictures. Thirty six moments of magic.

Up until that point, photos were things I saw in frames on a living room table, or pressed in a photo album, behind a thin layer of static cling, plastic sheeting. Sometimes a snapshot or a Polaroid would be shuffled out of a shoebox. This was a new thing… now I know the reason for a contact sheet, and the inherent magic of it, too. The outtakes, the misfires, the hidden gems, the one or two “winners” of the roll… they’re all there. The photographer’s secret story. Often not seen by any audience besides themselves. Hunched over a table, with a magnifying loupe in one hand, a grease pencil in the other. Contact sheets are something that get lost in today’s digital photography world. You can replicate the experience with a simple setting in Lightroom, which I use as my own virtual version of the darkroom practice nowadays. But something is already lost, as these are usually curated sheets that I’ve culled the duds from. Those of you who have spent any time shooting film and exposing paper in a darkroom know there really is no substitution for a contact sheet. It’s as elemental to the photographic process as the sharp smell of stop bath, wafting from a red lit tray.

2019: 41 (Contact Sheets | Half-frame Camera)

Shooting film is always a roll of the dice. You don’t know what you’ve captured on film until days (or weeks) later, after you’ve gotten your film processed. During my recent trip to Japan, I bought an old Olympus Pen EE-S, a half-frame film camera, on the first day of the trip. To those of you who are unfamiliar, a half-frame camera exposes only half of the usual 35mm film frame. Instead of 36 frames, the camera yields a whopping 72 photos per roll. An added bonus (or challenge) to using this camera is that the images are formatted vertically (as you can see on the contact sheet above.) So when I bought the camera, I had to trust that it was functioning properly. I knew I wasn’t going to see the results of this experience until I returned back home… so if the camera wasn’t working properly, I’d be shit out of luck, and there would be no opportunity to re-shoot the photos.

Here’s another curveball I needed to deal with. I wanted the film not only developed, but printed as contact sheets. Not a digitally layout of all the frame scans, but an actual, darkroom printed, contact sheet. I’m betting most of you reading this have never gotten a real contact sheet made. You lay the strips of film on a sheet of photo paper, expose it under the light of an enlarger, and then run that paper through photo chemistry. The result is what you see above. A nice way to judge all the photos from one roll of film. I actually had to ship my film to a lab in New York City to get this done (full disclosure, I also had them scan the film so I could have digital version for social media, etc.)

When the package finally arrived this week, I was relieved and excited to see the results. First off, the camera worked like a charm. Sure there were a couple of dud frames, mostly due to my bad skills at framing a moving subject, or not paying attention to the zone focus adjuster on the front of the lens. Otherwise though, the exposures look pretty much spot on. The exposure is controlled by a selenium meter on the front of the lens (see image below) which then adjusts the shutter speed to give a properly exposed image. The camera was made in the 1960s, so I was dubious whether it would function properly. If it didn’t work, I paid for an expensive, albeit very attractive, paperweight. Thankfully, my fears were not realized, and I have two rolls of memories from my trip.

This little gem of a camera… small, lightweight, and easy to use will most likely be in my pocket no matter what or where I decide to shoot next. It will be a unique addition to any other digital or film camera I might decide to use.

The wonderful Olympus Pen EE-S half-frame film camera. A thing of beauty and simplicity.