Tag Archives: camera

Film – Now with Better Pictures!

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Even though my first experience with film cameras did not turn out so well, I did not really want to stop. Why? Because it was interesting. Why is the film turning out that way? Is it the amount of light coming into the camera hitting the film, the old lens or camera, or the old film? I like figuring things out, learning more in the process, and in the end, ending up with an interesting result.

So, last week while I was on my “summer break” I went to my childhood beach house with my Dad and sister. I say “summer break” because I am taking summer classes at Georgia Tech and that’s all I get (well that and two weeks in the Fall before Fall classes). I took my film camera with me, armed with new film and experimented a bit. Dad, being resourceful with his knowledge of having had a film camera, thought it might be the light sensor for the camera. So we took his old film camera, my sister’s digital camera (just for funzies), and my camera out and compared light meter readings (yes, this is what I do with my free time). Turns out the old camera’s light meter has gone a bit off – the reading was not matching up with those determined by both my Dad and sister’s cameras. Uh oh!

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Adventures in Film Camera Land

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Some time ago one of my Dad’s friends brought his old camera from his time in the Marines to our house to take a look at it. I looked at it and didn’t know a thing about it, but knew I wanted to learn more about it. I like old things and this camera qualified as old.

Months pass and I come home during spring break. I “rediscover” the camera as I re-explorer my home again. I tell Dad I want to learn how to use it. Before you know it, we discover that it is a Pentax SP II and that it needed a new battery for the light sensor. However, that problem was solved with a modern battery from RadioShack works fine. Load up some old film found in the suitcase for the camera and I’m off to take pictures!

Two old rolls of film later and I’ve taken my first pictures with a film camera! Ta’da! Exciting isn’t it?

Well, thats the “exciting” part. I said the film was old and by old we’re guessing its around 10-20 years old. Now unlike today’s modern digital cameras, the analog film degrades over time which leads to imperfect pictures. So, I held onto that excitement of seeing whether or not my pictures were in face usable or whether the film had degraded so much that the pictures were pitch black through finals week at Georgia Tech until today. Today I processed the two rolls of film.

You can see the results here on my Flickr page. I must remind you, those are the few good pictures. When I say few, I mean few. In the Flickr set are 18 pictures out of the two rolls – thats 36 pictures per roll for a total of 72 pictures taken. Yes, 75% of the pictures taken were worthless. Am I sorry? No. I had fun, learned something about how photography began, and learned that old film is old and that the camera I have is special. But more on how it is special later.

For now, enjoy the pictures. More to come. Hopefully the special part of the camera won’t influence the results too much.

And yes, I hope to get back into blogging more. Its so much fun.

iPhone App: Pro HDR

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About a week or two ago, I broke down and bought the Pro HDR iPhone application.

Why did I buy it? I bought the application because the HDR functionality in iOS 4.1 is not able to be used on an iPhone 3GS which I happen to have and because in some situations, HDR can actually turn out a pretty good, looking image. Sometimes HDR images are just blown away, surrealistic images, but sometimes they can lead to good images.

The use of the application is quite easy. On start-up you are prompted with creating an “Auto HDR”, “Manual HDR”, or a “Library HDR”. Auto HDR is where the applications figures which exposures would be best to use to create a HDR of the scene before you. Manual HDR is where you the user selects the dark and light points in the image to create a HDR. Library HDR creates a HDR off of images you have already taken with your camera at a previous point.

Overall, the application works quite nicely. There are some instances where the image obviously looks modified by HDR, but some instances the image looks quite nice. The Auto HDR function does take a bit longer to run as the application iterates through all the exposure options for the device’s camera where as the Manual HDR just takes two taps and two button clicks to create the image. In reality it is like six to eight seconds for the Auto HDR to run and about four seconds for the Manual HDR to run.

Below is one of my favorite “HDR” images I have created thus far. You can view all my other HDR videos on my Flickr account here.