{No Time Like the Present} Pentax Spotmatic SPII, 2018

April 28, 2021 12:24 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

This will be the first in a series of photos that were taken so long ago that I really don’t know how to present them. I went an extended period of time without getting film developed, and as a result, have a lot of new photos to share that aren’t exactly recent. So, I figured there’s no time like the present to share them!

Today’s post is made up of photos taken in 2018 with my Pentax Spotmatic SPII (my $7.99 Salvation Army score from 2017.) I’m glad I got the film developed now. It reminded me of how much I like the Takumar lens that came with the camera.

These photos in particular just feel like every photo I took in 2017 for my daily photo project. Just photos documenting everyday little things.

Mini vegan chocolate cake with cream cheese icing

‘‘

Some narcissus flowers (I think…)

My niece modeling the Legend of Zelda necklace I bought her

Mini vegan carrot cake with cream cheese icing

At Area 51 ice cream

It’s called fashion, sweetie

My niece modeling the Death Note necklace I got her

Vegan raspberry chocolate chip blondie bars

One of my favorite things: emptying the change out of my bluebird of happiness coin bank

Vegan apple bread

Nature-y stuff around my family’s property

Pineapple painted gold, from a women’s brunch I attended at church

 

Pentax Spotmatic SPII • SMC Takumar 55mm f/1.8 • Kodak Ultramax 400

Posted in: film photography, Uncategorized ⋅ Tagged: , ,

Smoky Mountains 2019

April 23, 2021 9:50 am ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

I didn’t know how to start this blog because the contents of it seem so long ago now. Delays in getting film developed caused this post to be WAY over due. But here goes nothin’!

Our annual vacation to Gatlinburg, Tennessee in 2019 was in mid-November. I didn’t know there wouldn’t BE a 2020 vacation, so these photos and memories extra special to me now.

I don’t usually get photos on the way TO the mountains because we don’t stop a lot on the way, so my photos from the trip start at dinner when we’d just arrived in town…

Our first order of business is to eat at No Way Jose’s when we arrive that night – we highly recommend it if you’re in the area!

And on to the photos from the actual vacation!

We enjoyed getting to see a bit of snow without it impairing our travel to the area

The pancake restaurant next to the motel where we stay – we’ve never eaten there though!

From our walk to the Sky Bridge

My first time on a ski lift like this

Taken from the ski lift to the Sky Bridge

Views from the top

When we got to the Sky Bridge, we found out it was closed for the moment because they had to try to clear it of ice before anyone could walk on it.

Sitting around the fire while we waited for the Sky Bridge to be cleared of ice

They got the bridge cleared so we were able to go across it! 

Walking on a glass panel on the sky bridge

Elusive smiling picture of my niece and brother-in-law

Okay, I was having trouble out of the Ricoh FF-1 I was using for some of the photos, so I rewound the film and took it out. Apparently I guessed wrong about how many frames of film I’d shot in Gatlinburg when I later reloaded the film to finish shooting it, because I accidentally made double exposures over some of the shots. So there are some photos that are images of Gatlinburg stacked on top of images from Memphis and Mississippi which were taken in 2020.

My feet dangling off the sky lift on the way down the mountain+ the Pho Bihn sign in Memphis

I thought I would have pictures of the cute cafe where we ate lunch (Split Rail Eats) but the photos were overtaken by the accidental double exposures from Memphis! Aside from remembering the amazing fried pickles I had there, I will also always remember a comedic incident involving my mom trying to surprise me with an “early Christmas present,” and me being like “Mom, what are you doing?!” and her saying “Buying you an early Christmas present!!” and because I kept asking her what was going on, even the man who was helping her at the register said “Buying you an early Christmas present!” I get that this is only funny in a “you had to be there” sort of way, but what she’d done was ask about buying me the tiny baking pan I’d been served my fried pickles on because I had been enamored with it. So that’s what happened!

Faint images of the cafe where we ate that day + Midtown Donuts

You may notice, if you look back at previous years’ Smoky Mountain vacation photos, that we make it a point to hit up the cider bar at The Apple Barn. We usually hit that up a few times during our trip, actually!

Apple dumplings and fresh cider

Okay, I know my brother-in-law’s eyes are closed, but I was just happy to catch him smiling! 

My brother-in-law (a food service veteran) taught us how to properly fold a bag for a customer (in this case, US)

It’s your girl, in the Christmas shop at the Apple Barn

Another place we go to AT LEAST once while in Gatlinburg is the Old Mill Pottery House Cafe. Here are some shots from around there.

Waiting to have dinner at the Old Mill Pottery Cafe 

A beautiful morning in downtown Gatlinburg!

The coffee stand we pass a lot while walking around the main strip in downtown Gatlinburg

Pancake Pantry – we love it there! I’m so glad we splurge on a nice breakfast one morning of our trip (not that the breakfast at the motel is SO bad!)

Pancake Pantry is ALWAYS packed

In fact, we always seem to arrive just before a long line forms to get a table

Cozy decor at the Pancake Pantry

This time, the faint image is from home and the dominant one is from Gatlinburg. Taken at The Village Shops.

Surprisingly good tiny coffee shop in The Village

I always photograph the British red phone box at The Village 

Another place we frequently visit while on vacation is The Island in Pigeon Forge. I was really happy that Christmas decorations were up!

We also stop to watch the “show fountain” at The Island, which dance to music being played during the show 

Another accidental vacation/home photo taken of at The Island

Accurate representation of my brother-in-law. He looks at his crazy in-laws like this all the time!

I don’t know if we were supposed to take pictures in the metal pumpkin, but we did it anyway! (and then other people saw us and did the same for their photo ops!)

Food Court at the Mountain Mall in Gatlinburg

Lovely decorations in downtown Gatlinburg

No Way Jose’s AGAIN?! Yep! 

We visited Anakeesta too. We had been there previous years, but it was worth riding the Chondola up the mountain again this time too!

She was quite amused at herself for getting both a coffee and ice cream on this chilly morning at Anakeesta

I laughed when I got the film back. My niece is taking a picture, and my brother-in-law looks like a bodyguard in the back! (Actually, he’s licensed to do personal protection, hence his default bodyguard stance.)

Anakeesta’s “Willow Man,” which, according to their Facebook page is a “20′ tall personified tree” sculpture 

Very faint accidental double exposure 

I actually really love this accidental double exposure – my niece and her dad walking a section of the rope bridge at Anakeesta + a photo of my niece standing on a little side street in our town

Riding down the mountain from Anakeesta (my brother-in-law, niece, and sister in front of me)

After Anakeesta, we went to a monster movie themed restaurant for lunch, called Monster Mash

I wish I had done a better job photographing this, but there was a life sized Frankenstein hanging above the bar at Monster Mash

A few of us went on one last walk in downtown Gatlinburg on our last night there

And that was pretty much it!!! Except for a couple of shots taken on our way home!

Sweet ride that was being hauled on the interstate on our way home that day

I think this is the point when vacation was finally over: we stopped for dinner about an hour from home

Photos taken with the following film cameras: Minolta Stsi, Ricoh FF-1, Fuji Instax SQ6, Canon Rebel Ti, and Yashica T4

Posted in: Uncategorized

{Square in an Instant}

February 4, 2021 9:25 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

Lemme tell you: I LOVE square photos. I miss Polaroid (okay, so they’re still a thing, but for more money and less awesome results.) I was so excited a few years ago when Instax came out with a square format. I was already shooting the Mini and Wide Instax formats, so the addition of little square photos excited me.

The Fuji Instax SQ6 is a camera I picked up in November 2018, right before going on a little vacation to the Smoky Mountains. As in, it arrived the night before we left, and I took it with me and started using it on our trip without any prior experience with the camera. This is not something I would normally recommend one doing, because you should not risk vacation photos by using a camera you have no experience with. But on a mostly automatic instant film camera, the risk wasn’t that high. The SQ6 operates similarly to the Instax Mini 90 (which I’ll discuss at some point in this post,) so I felt I could be comfortable using it for vacation shots.

I meant to actually review this camera after I’d used it for a bit, but that never happened because I just kept on shooting it, figuring out how to get the best results as I went along. That’s why these photos are from late 2018/early 2019.

A few selection from my previously posted Smoky Mountain blog:

And now for a bunch of photos I’d intended to use for a review!

A few Christmas double exposures. Catch me in one of them?

Macro shots are not easy to frame on this camera, as evidenced by this photo

Another example of tricky macro mode photography

Snapshots from the small town where I live

The bathroom at the dental college where my niece has her orthodontic work done

I’m actually glad I took these photos, because the gas station has since been refurbished and doesn’t have the same paint job or the gas pump on their sign anymore

Macro, in an instance where framing wasn’t too critical

These were hard to photograph without getting glare on the photo – but yay for lit signs at Bass Pro in Memphis

I am a Man mural in downtown Memphis near the National Civil Rights Museum

I told my niece that, if she had social media, this would have been a good profile picture (also taken in downtown Memphis)

This is a double exposure that wasn’t worth the trouble – I stepped on a spike from the honey locust tree and impaled my shoe/toe

(there are a few SQ 6 photos I really like that are in a post from last year and below are a few from that same time period, as a bonus)

I really wanted this Instax SQ6 to be just like a square version of the Instax Mini 90, but it’s not. I’m very happy you can choose to turn the flash off on the SQ6 (which isn’t the case for most Instax cameras,) but some of the extra features that both the SQ6 and Mini 90 share in common are much less functional on the former than on the latter. They both have double exposure, macro, infinity focus, and light/dark exposure compensation, but on the SQ6, you can’t combine any of those features because they’re all selected through the same mode button. More specifically, my complaint is that the light/dark compensation needs to be its own button like on the Mini 90.

Double exposures are hard to do when you can’t change the amount of exposure they’re receiving; you end up with an overexposed picture because you exposed the film twice  without being able to dial in less exposure for each shot on that frame of film. Also, what if you need to focus to infinity but need to dial in more or less exposure? If Fuji would make a square format camera that’s almost exactly like the SQ6, but with the addition of a separate light/dark button, I’d be IN!

 

Posted in: camera review, film photography, Fuji Instax ⋅ Tagged: , , ,

{Getting to Know You} Yashica T2

January 29, 2021 8:59 am ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

Well, I started this post in 2018. The photos from the first roll of film shared in it were taken in 2017. The second roll was from 2018. I felt like the post was a little incomplete, so I planned on shooting another roll with the Yashica T2 to add to the photos I already had, but apparently that didn’t happen. I mean, I don’t really have an excuse for not shooting a third roll with this camera in 2019, but I think we can al agree that I have several excuses for bit getting it done in 2020 😂

But onward and upward.

Originally drafted in 2018:

My 2017 thrift shop camera finds were EPIC. Imagine my shock when, a few weeks after finding a Yashica T4 at the lowly Goodwill Outlet, I found a Yashica T2 at the same store! While the T4 was $2, the T2 set me back a whopping $5 😀

Yashica T2 specs:

  • 35mm f/3.5 Carl Zeiss Tessar T* lens
  • Automatic exposure
  • Shutter speeds: 1/8s-1/500s
  • Accepts DX-coded film, speeds 50-1600 ISO
  • Built-in flash
  • Shooting distance: 1m – infinity (3.3ft – infinity)

I wasn’t expecting to care much about this camera. It is pretty much the older sibling of the T4. They have the same lens, but the T2 is bigger, more bulky, louder, and with fewer features. However – don’t ask me how or why – but somehow I like the way the photos from the T2 look better. Even though the lens is probably identical in both of them? There’s more warmth to them.

(some of this first roll were featured in my 2017 daily photo project, but it’s been long enough since that project occurred that I don’t mind posting some of them here too.)

Roll #1, December 2017

 

Roll #2, July-ish 2018

Okay, this roll was mostly an impromptu paparazzi style photo shoot after my niece got a haircut, but I managed to fit in some shots of other things too 😀

 

(Both rolls were Fujicolor 200 film)

There are some things to not like about this camera, mainly its boxy design (of its era though) and the fact that, to ensure the flash doesn’t fire, you have to hold down a tiny button on top of the camera whilst pushing the shutter button.

Flash off and fill flash buttons

It’s also loud. As are most auto advance cameras from this period of time. But I like the Yashica T2 despite these little quibbles. Especially for a $5 thrift outlet store find during 2017, the year of the thrift shop camera!

Side note:

There is (what I would describe as) a “smoky filter” over the lens in lieu of a traditional lens cover that would open up when the camera is powered on. I thought I had a defective camera on my hands because the filter only slides away when a photo is actually being taken. Turns out that’s how it’s SUPPOSED to operate. Just thought I would share that in case you get a Yashica T2 and think it’s broken because the lens cover doesn’t move away when you turn the camera on!

Posted in: camera equipment, camera review, film photography ⋅ Tagged: ,