A few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to run through a couple of rolls of Fuji 120 film in a borrowed camera. The results on the whole are less than encouraging and lead me to believe several things.
- The camera leaks light like a drunkard relieves himself; all over the place and completely without warning
- Whoever developed the film on behalf of O’Learys Camera World needs to find a new career
- Whoever scanned the film needs to stop sneezing on their scanner and trying to clean it up by wiping a cat across it
- The term “high resolution” means nothing anymore. In the high-res folder on the cd’s I paid extra for were JPEG’s of approx 800kb each. That’s not high-res. I’d have killed for a 30 odd meg TIFF file
It wouldn’t be enough to stop me from experimenting more with black & white medium format photography, but maybe with a properly light sealed camera and with enough equipment and chemicals to develop and scan the negatives myself. The prints I got back (although granted they were only proofs) were worth exactly feck all. I’d have paid extra again not to get them. The camera left whopping great streaks of light across most of the negs and then the scanner added in loads of dust and a few hairs. Thank God I got photoshop installed in the last few days.
I did manage to get a few usable prints out of the two rolls, most of which I’ve someway processed and cleaned up for flickr. To someway keep in line with the ‘old worldyness’ of it all, I left some scanner crap in!
Perhaps the single most annoying thing about all of it is, with such unfathomably low-res scans, I can’t even get any prints done! I could reprint off the negs or get them scanned properly but that’d be a little too much like throwing good money after bad. Ahh but it’s not all bad. It’s given me a bit of a taste for film again (when time permits). I wonder where my 35mm camera is gone?!? The perils of moving house, everything is in a box somewhere. I’ve got a couple more of these on flickr too.
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I use MF and LF a lot here, depending on the client (and what theyre willing to pay). Any film camera that leaks light belongs in one place imo…and thats not in a camera bag. The seals can be repaired cheaply tho.
I’d suggest going to color-foto on coburg st Ryan for good printing and scanning, they cost a little more, but theyre damn good at what they do. Theyre just a few doors away from Patricks hill side.