Things went pretty well. My first two rolls were basically me getting used to the camera. It has a shutter interlock system that gave me some overlapped frames. It turns out I have to cock the shutter and then advance the film. I also kept forgetting to close the frame number window on the back. The result was more than a few pictures with some red streaks on them. Oh, and the framelines are, to quote a popular pirate movie, “They be more like guidelines…” The framing is significantly off. Guess I’ll have to just shoot loose and crop later. I’ll get used to it eventually… The good news is that the exposures were good and the focusing was mostly good. Shooting a medium format camera wide open requires some careful focusing… There was the expected issues with the lab. A very typical thing to have happen is to get grunge on the larger film. 35mm is thinner and so many labs just keep the center of the rollers clean, but when you run 120 film through there and use the entire roller, you get to see all of the upkeep issues at the lab on your negatives. The guy promises me that he’ll have it clean next time. I’ll give him another shot, they were quick, and more importantly, they are nearby. There is another place I can go to, but it’s a bit of a drive to get there. I’ll do it if I have to, but here’s hoping this place can get it’s act together…
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