Topic: I'm back!

[Indofunk]

Nothing like a forum crash to bring the in-house web admin back into action 😁 I think I stopped posting/lurking here around the time I quit my last dayjob at the end of 2022. In the meantime, I did a 3 month self-funded tour of Europe in order to do some reconnaissance of possible future musical opportunities, my father died (it's ok, I've healed from it), my main musical employer suffered a rare spinal stroke leaving him paralyzed (I am less over this one), and I've been trying to make yet another go at it as a fulltime musician. Oh, I also very recently got into videography (d*****l, sorry) as a freelance production assistant with a videographer I know in town. I'm also house photographer (again, d*****l 😢) for a local brewery's weekly music series. In between all that, and playing as many trumpet gigs as I can, and teaching myself sousaphone, I have managed to shoot some film 😁 I've started rolling my own, which I'm now angry that I did not start much sooner 😂 It's cheaper, and I can roll 18-24 exposure rolls, which is about the number of exposures I tend to shoot before getting antsy to develop them 😁 I currently have 2 bulk loaders, one filled with HP5, my go-to film for pushing to 1600ISO, and the other with Fuji 64T which is AMAZING at every ISO from 16 to 256. Here are a couple of samples (all at 32, cross processed in C41):

[Francois]

I'm really sorry to hear about your father and you gig supplier. But like they say, things like that happen.
And you don't have to be ashamed of doing digital work. It's just a different way of doing things. A bit like a claw hammer vs a ball-peen hammer. In the end, they're both tools used to hit things.

Heck, whether we admit it or not, the digital thing has it's place and we all use it when necessary. I recently got a used Olympus Pen digital (got a great deal on it) and a waterproof Coolpix (got it for cheap too) and I'm quite happy with them. While they don't feel as satisfying as an old Zorki, they do work very well.

When I roll my own spools, I usually tend to roll them in multiples of 5 frames so that they fit perfectly in the Printfile sheets I have. This makes things so much tidier!

And yes, the Fuji does look awful nice 😊

[astrobeck]

Sorry about your Pop, and glad to see you here.
Welcome back!

[Ed Wenn]

Damn, Satish! You've had a LOT going on since I saw you in NYC 2 summers hence. I'm sorry to hear about the downs and the setbacks, but it's very cool to hear about the new ventures. Good luck with everything.

I've not started rolling my own yet, but that's mainly because I spent 10 years buying all the film that I felt should come to a good home and then stopped shooting as much. Now that I've got back into it, there are rolls of film all over the house (sometimes in the most surprising places) and I have resolved to make a serious dent in the backlog before buying more film. My daughter's started shooting film in a couple of nice P 'n S cameras and is doing me proud with her output. She's got her own stash of 50 rolls of Agfa Vista that will keep her going for a while yet.

[Francois]

there are rolls of film all over the house (sometimes in the most surprising places)

Does that mean we'll get to see the results of some mystery stored behind the water heater film? 😁
(I'm barely much better as I've had the same roll of film in my camera bag "just in case" for probably the last 10 years... and the camera bag sits just on top of the heating duct so it's always a bit warm)

[Ed Wenn]

A good friend of mine recently got a roll of film developed from an old SLR that he's used on and off for the last 15 years. Like most of us he has a lot of cameras so what follows kind of makes sense.

What he hadn't realised until he got the prints back from the lab was that he'd had THE SAME roll in the camera the whole time, so he had photos of his kids going from 5-8 years old into early adulthood along with homes  shifting from London to LA and now Berlin. It was actually kind of wonderful seeing his son as an 8 year old at primary/elementary school in London, then as a teenager in LA and finally (on the last couple of frames) as a 21 year old in Berlin.

[Francois]

Now that is definitely what I call an under-used camera 

[Indofunk]

A good friend of mine recently got a roll of film developed from an old SLR that he's used on and off for the last 15 years. Like most of us he has a lot of cameras so what follows kind of makes sense.

What he hadn't realised until he got the prints back from the lab was that he'd had THE SAME roll in the camera the whole time, so he had photos of his kids going from 5-8 years old into early adulthood along with homes  shifting from London to LA and now Berlin. It was actually kind of wonderful seeing his son as an 8 year old at primary/elementary school in London, then as a teenager in LA and finally (on the last couple of frames) as a 21 year old in Berlin.

That is amazing and the kind of thing that can't even be planned 😁

[Francois]

What surprises me is that it isn't a half-frame... then, I could have understood.