Just Out of Curiosity

I first began taking pictures when I was in my early teens.  I had a little box camera, some kind of Kodak Instamatic that I would just drop a 110 film cartridge in and go shoot pictures until it was gone.  Then I'd ride my bike down to the local drug store to get it developed and pick it up a week later to see how my pictures turned out.  I used that little camera until I was on my mission when, in my last city, a few months before coming home, I bought a SLR camera.  There aren't many pictures from my instamatic days that have survived.  I started a scrapbook way back then and the pictures that made it into my scrapbook are about the only ones still around.

So, when I came home from my mission I used my SLR camera a lot.  The things was, though, that the camera I bought on my mission was a model made in East Germany, a Porst.  The United States didn't trade with East Germany so when I began to want accessories I had to figure out what brand was compatible.  And I did, Pentax was the compatible brand. So when I finally wore out my Porst I replaced it with a Pentax so I could continue to use all my accessories.  Eventually my Pentax wore out as well and this time I replaced it with a Ricoh, which was still compatible with all my accessories.  That was nice because by this point I had several lenses and filters. 

Then the digital age began.  I didn't get into digital pictures for a while, we didn't have a computer for a while.  My first digital pictures were still taken with my conventional SLR camera but when I developed them I would get prints and a CD.  I continued doing that for a few years before I finally just got the CD, no prints.  My first digital camera was a little Vivitar which I picked as my anniversary gift from my company at a "milestone" anniversary, my 25th, I think.  I still have the camera but a lot of the labeling has worn off the function buttons.  That makes things challenging.  Anyway, at that point we also had a pretty decent computer and I was in the digital photography age. I still used my Ricoh because the Vivitar was only a 7.0 mega pixels and the quality wasn't anything to brag home about.  It wasn't terrible, it just wasn't as good as my SLR. It also had only a limited (3x) digital zoom. But it was only a couple of years later that I got a Canon PowerShot, which pretty much brought the retirement of my Ricoh.  The Canon had 12.1 mega pixels, full high definition, a 35x optical zoom, and so many settings I was hard pressed to know how to use all the features it had.  The Ricoh went up onto the top shelf of my closet, along with all the film I still had, where it all began to collect dust.   

Fast forward to about the middle of last January.  There was a wonder in the heavens coming on January 31st and I wanted to take pictures.  The wonder was a confluence of events relating to the moon.  It was a "blue moon", meaning it was the second full moon in the same month.  It was also a "super moon", meaning the moon as at its apogee, its closest point to the earth.  And there was a lunar eclipse.  That combination hadn't occurred visible in the western hemisphere for 152 years. I wanted to see if I could get pictures but last time I had tried to take pictures of the moon I had trouble getting my Canon to focus on it.  It was too far away for the auto-focus to work.  But, hey!  My old conventional camera sure could do it! 

So I dug out my camera and all the film I had to see what was available.  I actually had quite a pile of film, some of it had been given to me since I had quit using my SLR so the pile had grown a little over the years.  But then I got to looking at the expiration dates on the film.  Some of it was pretty old.  My, its amazing how fast the time can fly by sometimes.  Some of the film was slide film, some was black and white, some was color.  It was different speeds of film, some for outdoors, some for indoors or darker environments.  But all of it pretty old. 

What I finally settle on was the newest stuff there but it was still 10 years past its expiration date.  It was a roll of 400 color print film, the stuff I used to use all the time because it was versatile enough to switch from indoor to outdoor without having to do a bunch of compensating.  It took me a few minutes to refresh my memory on how to even just open my camera, it had been that long!  But I got it open, started the film onto the take-up reel, and clicked it through until the counter got to the first shot.  Then I had to remember and check all the settings, making sure it was set for the film speed and all. I had forgotten how much work it was to put a new can of film into my old camera. 

So my purpose with this particular roll of film was to just shoot it and see if the quality was still any good after all these years.  So I wanted to shoot through the whole roll fairly fast and in a variety of lights and situations.  The role had 24 exposures on it, that had become a foreign concept.  With digital you just shoot all you want and never worry about running out of film.  I suppose, if your SD card was small enough, you could run out of room, but it would hundreds of photos, if not thousands, before that happened.  It just wasn't something I ever worried about any more, even when on vacation.

What I found was that the more light there was the better the pictures turned out.  This little cutie, Schwartzbeere's youngest, was sitting in his high chair, which is just inside the sliding glass door, lots of light.  Enjoying some lunch. But even with all the light coming in the sliding glass door, the picture is a bit grainy.  Cute little kid, nice picture, but the film quality definitely has suffered from age.




We decided to make a quick run over to Blaubeere's house since there was a birthday going on over there.  These next two I took out in the driveway as we were getting in the car to go.  They are the best shots on the whole roll.  Lots of out door light.  They both look pretty much normal, don't seem to have suffered in quality at all. 

We took an old toaster with us.  The toaster had quit working and we had promised it to Blaubeere's  second, who has been showing quiet a bit of interest in how things work.  He wanted to dissect it, to take it apart and see what was going on inside.  He has his own tool box, with a number of tools.  This picture was taken indoors, at their kitchen table. Not a real dark setting but still no direct, outdoor sunlight. Even though I made sure I had the light settings all correct the quality of the picture is pretty poor.  The good ones were taken with my phone camera.  Quite the difference. 

Watching him dig into the toaster was in interesting experience.  His initial interest was simply in tearing the toaster apart.  He'd grab at whatever part he could get his pliers onto and then twist and pull, trying to break his way in.  I was mean and insisted he slow down and try to disassemble it, looking for what was holding it together and using his screw driver and pliers and remove screws and nuts & bolts. He actually lasted quite a while with that new approach but ultimately he got back to twisting and pulling.  But by that point things were held together with tabs through slots and twisting and pulling actually was the right approach.  He just wasn't all too careful to get the tabs lined up so they'd pass out of the slots easily.  He got it pretty much broken clear down and we were able to look at the various parts to see what made it toast the bread. It was an interesting experience.

While the toaster was being dismantled in the kitchen there was a little concert getting started in the other room.  Blaubeere and her oldest were getting out some musical instruments.  An interesting duet, the violin and a banjo.  They're both still learning but they're actually getting pretty good.  Blaubeere is pretty much self-taught on the banjo.  Her oldest was taking lessons on the violin.  He and his sibs had been taking lessons for a couple of years when they lost their teacher.  But they still keep at it, learning a few new pieces and looking for a new teacher. 

The quality of these pictures is also pretty poor.  These were in the living room, where there is not a whole lot of light. Not much, if any more than in the kitchen. That seems to be the common thread, the less light the more the age of the film is evident.  Its really too bad they didn't turn out.  They would have been good pictures.  Ah, well.  It was kind of a long shot anyway.  Ten years past the expiration date is quite a ways.

In the end, only 22 of the 24 exposures turned out any good at all, good enough to be able to tell what they were.  We got back into town just in time to turn them in to get developed.  I had really hoped to get them back and see how well they had worked in just a day or two.  This was on the 27th, a Saturday, that we took these pictures and the super moon was on the 31st, the coming Wednesday.  But when I turned them in they said it would take a week to get them developed.  And I had to get the prints, they didn't do just the CD.  I guess conventional film wasn't as big a part of their business as it used to be.  That meant I wouldn't know if the film was any good until after the super moon.  But in the end, it didn't matter.  It was snowing all day Wednesday.  Couldn't see the moon at all.  But it was an interesting experiment nonetheless.  And, having learned that the film was pretty much no good, I tossed it all.  I'll stick to digital, thank you all the same.