Saturday, August 4, was #DianaDay, the annual celebration of Diana cameras started by Denise over on Twitter. To celebrate, I took a drive up to Gainesville, TX for some fried pies and a walk around. Great plan, right?
I think so… and it would’ve been too, except, well, read on.
First off, I didn’t really have a plan. The trip to Gainesville came to me in a flash of inspiration sometime late Friday night, and it was really just a stab in the dark.
#DianaDay is tomorrow, and I need a plan… 48-50 or 72-75 shots is too much to just go out and whatever. Any ideas #believeinfilm buddies in North Texas?
— James Cockroft (@jam_esc) August 3, 2018
But the drive up was easy, and my breakfast at the Fried Pie Co. & Restaurant was delicious (garden omelet with hashbrowns and rye toast), as were the fried pies I brought back to share with the family (blueberry, cherry, peach, pineapple, lemon).
What the? Or as Mr. Holga said, “What do you use for scanning? [These] seem like really low quality. Or did you shrink the pics down?”
Well… I had some issues. Let me fast forward a bit.
I developed this roll (and my roll for the August #PortraParty) as roll 45 and 46 out of a batch of Tetanol C-41 chemicals that I mixed on 2/15/2018. Rolls 43 and 44 were fine (with 30 seconds of extra development time and a minute of extra blix) if a bit on the green side, so I felt confident.
Rolls 45 and 46 about to go through this batch of Tetanol chems from the good people at @FilmPodcast mixed 2/15/2018. Rolls 43/44 had a green cast that was easy to clean up thanks to #dslr scanning technique. Fingers crossed, but I’m confident. pic.twitter.com/JkSVl0lLX7
— James Cockroft (@jam_esc) August 12, 2018
And then I started scanning…
Yes, that’s an (almost) straight out of camera scan from the new Scan-O-Matic X mark 2. The new scanning rig has a wood base, so it’s much more stable than the otherwise excellent Scan-O-Matic X, and to be honest, I couldn’t have asked for better negatives to test and refine the design, but even with great scans, it took all my Capture One tricks and skill to get even shoddy results out of these negatives.
Ugh. So look forward to really awful scans for both #DianaDay and the #PortraParty (to be shared tomorrow, God willing).
So. After breakfast, I started walking. Mom and I took a brief walk around after some birthday fried pies back in 2016, but this time, I went all over, up and down, around and back, pretty much just spraying Diana Mini frames all over the place.
It being August in North Texas, I thought it best to get headed back home sooner, rather than later, so by 9 or so, I was back in the car, headed back towards home.
I pulled off at an older picnic area just south of Gainesville, with these great mid-Century (20th) shelters.
And stopped again at the Boliver Cemetery to pay my respects some grandparents and great grandparents, and then the roll of Fuji Superia X-TRA 400 was done.
To be honest, I was shocked at how quickly it went by. I expected it would take me all day to get through it, much like last year, and I failed to bring along another camera or a spare roll of film. I stopped in Denton and hung around until the Denton Camera Exchange opened, thinking I might get another roll, but decided against it at the last moment and just came home.
It’s a shame that I borked the development so badly. These scans don’t do justice to the Diana Mini at all. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll try again, and #DianaDay 2019 is only ~50 weeks away. God willing, I’ll have better luck then.
