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Here is my new fangled idea. I haven’t made a contact sheet since 2000. I have an entire binder of pseudo organized 35mm negatives from that point to the present. I want to ultimately contact print everyone and put teh contact print in a page right behind the set of negatives. Its really annoying having to take out each sheet of negatives and hold them up to the light to find a certain one that I’m looking for.

I’m also certain that there is a whole slew of random photos that I can print up and send them to various family members/friends. I’d like to quickly know which ones will be good to do this with without scanning up each individual print.

First two steps are complete. I purchased a 35mm contact printing frame, and today I purchased 125 count box of RC Glossy paper. (The 125 count box being hidden below the 100 count box of the same brand for $1 more in price at the local shop that still peddles traditional materials.)

Now it is just a matter of labor. I can’t wait to see how badly some of this old stuff from before I knew how to read negatives was exposed & developed.

Today I finally got to get some paper wet after doing the calibrations mentioned in this post. I’ve only ran one so far, but it is very exciting to see a strait print holding full shadow detail, and highlights, without having to do endless dodging and burning. I feel so liberated having a completely usable print on a piece of paper where any dodging & burning that will ultimately will be done, will be because its is something I want to change, not just to reach this point.

What I’m wondering now, is how did I get through a whole series of college courses and never once have a professor offer a one week assignment where each student calibrated their materials? I had such a roadblock back then doing complex dodging & burning, just to get workable prints, that I had such little time remaining to “Express my emotions.”

Oh well. The secret has been unveiled to me, time to go back into the darkroom.

May 17th - 20th, 2007 by the numbers:

• 1008.8: Number of miles added to my car’s odometer.
• 100: Number of dollars spend on take home beer which isn’t available to me locally. (Westmalle, Orval, Ommegang etc. . )
• 4: Number of rolls of hp5+ that my Olympus Trip 35 chewed through.
• 6: Estimated number of photos that aren’t completely boring.
• 2: Number of those photos that could possibly make it the this site’s main gallery due to the subject matter.
• 1: Number of Olympus Trip 35s that need to be opened up again for further augmentation of the 1/200th & 1/40th modification.

Now, it was a little disappointing that on the last day, the ability to set & keep the camera in the 1/200th mode disappeared. But, the field testing was needed. The mechanism that makes this choice between the shutter speeds is a bit weak, and I couldn’t have really expected the fix i made to have lasted forever. On the positive side, I’m 95% sure I know exactly what went wrong, and already have a feasible solution in my head on how to modify it internally so that it has no choice to set it self back to 1/40th unless I tell it so. Shutter speed subjugation will be mine.

I also acquired my SLR, so I can take some macros of what I’ve been doing to this camera internally. So the modification guide should be completed with illustrations in a few weeks.

Say hello to the newest member of my equipment line-up, Mr. Yaschicamat LM.

I picked it up this weekend at an estate sale that I crossed paths with while driving around looking for random garage sales. Everything appeared to be in great shape, and the price was right, so it has found itself a new loving home.

It should work out well. I’ve wanted something to do work similar to Lake Superior While you Sleep, only on a negative larger then 35mm. 4×5 isn’t the most practical system for this type of shooting, so hopefully this machine can bridge that gap and get me back into the ulta low light photography scene.

To compliment my old article about modifying an Olympus Trip 35 to use the 1/200th shutter speed while shooting manually, I have posted the first part of a guide that will allow for both of the camera’s shutter speeds to be used while in manual mode.

See it here.