And I found some more quirks…
And some more fun surprises too!
First, though, I’ll make an admission… I have trouble loading film.
I shot an entire roll through the LC-A, 36 exposures, 37 exposures, 38 exposures, 39 exposures, and I think the counter stopped there, but the winder kept turning, and the shutter kept firing… at some point (and after shooting on this roll for a couple of months)—actually, it was halfway through our brief anniversary vacation, on top of Mount Bonnel, after taking some dynamite portraits of my darling, adorable wife, and I was all excited to pull this roll and feed it another one when I realized that I needed to open the back up and see what was going on…
I hadn’t loaded the film properly, and so it hadn’t actually exposed through the roll… the leader and about 3 inches of film had just been hanging out there for a couple of months.
:facepalm:
So I cursed laughed at my foolishness/clumsiness, and managed to load the roll fully and/or properly by the time we got down to “lake” Travis.
I didn’t expect the film to be loaded, nor did I expect it to capture and expose Frame 00 even halfway, but there it is, and with some fun color effects in the sprockets that are more or less a mystery to me.
And behind her, you can see Lake Travis… and the reason for the scare quotes above. The lake is fairly dried up and there are houseboats and very fancy docks just sitting around on the ground at the point we visited… probably why the park was completely empty and the park employee looked so surprised to see us.
Also, if you look through this gallery, you’ll note another problem I have with the handling of this camera: I sometimes have trouble keeping my thumb or finger, or something out of the lens…
Upon returning from our anniversary vacation, I carried the LC-A around for a few weeks until I finished the toll.
When in work mode, my activities are fairly consistent: I go to work early in the morning, I come home in the mid-afternoon, I walk to the masjid for prayers, I walk home, I lather, rinse, and repeat. I more or less see the same things at more or less the same time at least 4 days per week.
Most of the time, the iPhone is the camera of choice, but from time to time, I grab the LC-A (or another camera you’ll meet in an upcoming post) and try to capture the interesting things I see, like this parking garage staircase that looks like something out of a David Lynch film, that I see most mornings, and have tried to capture before, with somewhat less success than what you find here.
Especially since it reveals some flare/ghosting potentials with this lens. I think the light source above and to the left of the camera, just in front of the film plane. That’s what it looks like from the picture, anyway. And from my memory.
(And yes, I struggle with the zone focus from time to time.)
And part of my daily routine includes walking to prayers, one of which—the Maghrib prayer—takes place just after sunset.
Believe: I witness some magnificent sunsets.
The iPhone 5 never manages to capture them particularly well: it always pushes the ISO too high and blows out the sky, even now, with iOS8 and the exposure slider.
But with a small, sharp-lensed, film camera in a pocket, loaded with some low-ISO film, and with a Stop sign to lean against, possibilities expand.
I don’t have the energy to go through all the rest of these, so just enjoy the gallery.
Lomo LC-A, Lomography Color 100 film, developed at home, digitized with the Scan-O-Matic 7000, and processed in Lightroom.
