Argus C3
The latest member of the family… A late model Argus C3 with case. Everything works great, and there was an exposed roll of film inside!
Some notes from my first film scanning experience
Just a couple notes from my first experiences with the film scanner:
Scanning slides was much easier than scanning negatives. Partly because my negatives are more dusty & scratchy than my slides, but also because I found it more difficult to line up the negatives on the negative feeder.
I spent about 20 minutes removing dust from the color photo of Julie in Photoshop. Not fun.
Not surprisingly, color scans look better than black & white scans. I need more practice with b&w before I really feel comfortable with it.
I have to refigure my workflow now. I can probably adapt part of my digital workflow, but I have to think about naming conventions. For digital, my files are named along the lines of [Description]-[Year]-[Month]-[Camera]-[Sequence]-[Version], but for film, I probably need to add roll# and frame# in there somewhere.
I am definitely more excited about shooting some film now.
New Film Scanner!
I finally purchased a film scanner!
This baby you see here is a Konica Minolta Dimage Scan Dual IV.
I have wanted a film scanner for a long time. I no longer have access to a darkroom, so all my prints are made by someone else (usually a machine). And frankly, the idea of scanning machine prints and trying to make them look OK in Photoshop makes me kind of sick. I would much rather scan the negative or slide directly.
I’m hoping this will encourage me to shoot film more often.
Anyway, as soon as it arrives, I will scan some of my old negatives and post the results here for your amusement.
My First SLR
My first SLR was a Canon EOS RT, purchased in 1994 or 1995 from Dodd Camera in Cleveland, Ohio. I can’t remember exactly what I paid for it, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $500, which included the camera, a workable ProMaster 28-80 zoom lens, and a Canon Speedlite 200E flash.
The EOS RT was a fairly remarkable little camera at the time. It was essentially an EOS 630 with a pellicle mirror. Coated with some sort of magical secret substance, the mirror was see-through and did not flip up out of the way during exposure. While it cost a little bit of light to the viewfinder (about 2/3 stop, if I remember correctly), it allowed the camera to be very fast and very quiet, and you could actually see what you were photographing during exposure.
My reasons for purchasing an RT over some other camera are a bit fuzzy for me now. I desperately wanted a “real camera.” It wasn’t a Rebel. I couldn’t afford an EOS 1n RS. It was a good deal. I had heard of Canon. The Nikons were weird and expensive.
In the years that I had it, the RT was usually the only camera I owned and I used it all the time. I mean… ALL THE TIME. It went to work with me. It went on vacation with me. I probably slept with it. It was the first camera I ever used to photograph a nude model! I took some pretty good photos with that camera. I loved that camera.
But alas, I sold it in 2001 during a period of abject poverty. It was the last thing of value that I had left to sell — aside from my adorable ass, and I wasn’t quite that hungry yet. The RT held it’s value pretty well over those years, and I got almost as much for it used as I paid for it new. Canon’s other pellicle mirror camera, the EOS 1n RS, cost thousands of dollars more, so the RT was a highly desirable camera for many people.
Since 2001, I have become what most people refer to as a gearhead. I have more cameras than I need, more than I can probably use. I even have somewhere in my collection a Canon EOS 1n RS (see here and here), which was once the dream camera so far beyond my budget and which I have never used to take photographs (it has been fondled a lot, though). I have considered many times picking up another RT for sentimental reasons, but I’ve always resisted because I know I would never use it. Like that has ever stopped me from buying any other camera. I dunno, maybe I just respect her too much for that.
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