February 2015
I loaded up the RB67 with Tri-X when the film arrived and started taking shots of things around the house using various apps on my iPhone as a light meter. Right away I noticed I needed a cable release. $2.50 at the local camera store got me a used cable release that looks and operates as new.
I’d gotten lazy depending upon the camera to keep track of things like when an image was shot at what exposure. My second shooting gear addition was a notebook to write such things down.
I’m using Diafine to develop the Tri-X. The box suggests shooting with an Exposure Index of 1600. I’m using 1200 0r 1250 depending upon which light meter app I was using. By the end of the roll I’d determined I like the way the Lumu app works and settled on using only it. It also compared well against a Sekonic meter loaned to me by a friend.
The pictures
Photo supplies
Pool house
Fountain
Red ball and lens flair
Pool side - f/22 1/400s
Planter - f/16 1/400
Azalia - f/5.6 1/250
Spring blooms - f/8 1/250
Crocosmia and Red Ball - f/16 1/400
Tesla front wheel - f/3.5 1/15
Notes
It had been so long since I’d looked at negatives I thought they were over exposed when I looked at them drying on a film hanger. Later when I tried to scan them they came out near black. I figured I’d been thinking positive, not negative, and the frames were drastically under exposed. Or was it the 12 year old scanner? I scanned a regular photo on the same scanner. The results proved the scanner was as good as dead. What I didn’t know was how good or bad the negatives might be.
It took two tries to get a scanner delivered to the house. Word to the wise: the Epson store sucks. Buy their product from B&H or Amazon, etc. Anyway, once the new scanner arrived (Epson V600) the negatives proved to be mostly OK. The image titled “Fountain” was over exposed by at least a stop. The other images had minor adjustments made in Lightroom, mostly the addition of a little “clarity”. That was the only adjustment made to “Planter”, for example.
Not bad for the first roll. My goal of getting used to the camera is partly reached. I still sometimes forget to do something like pull out the dark slide then wonder why the shutter won’t trip.