Square Print face-off: Artifact Uprising vs. Parebo

I’ve had a nebulous desire to start printing some of my photographs for several years, but haven’t really had the funds or the impetus to do much of anything about it. Sure, I jumped on a couple of groupons and printed a couple of books for gifts, but good printing can get expensive and a good printer, while reasonable enough, comes with the additional—and often insane—cost of ink. So when VSCO offered users 25 “free” prints from its Artifact Uprising subsidiary (just pay shipping), I jumped at the chance to see some of my more recent pictures in print. I quickly found 5 pictures with some tenuous relationship to one another, put them on my phone, ran them through the SquareReady app (sadly, and somewhat strangely, square prints require square images: it seems like it would be easy for apps to letterbox rectangular images, but nope), and then loaded them into the Artifact Uprising app. It was a bit tricky to figure out how to get 5 of each—the app is really designed for you to add 25 different square pictures—but once I found the FAQ and figured out how to follow its instructions, it was pretty easy.

My plan was to write about the experience and give a set of prints to whoever wanted them, but then Parebo Press—part of the Photojojo empire—offered the same thing: 25 “free” prints, just pay shipping. I didn’t read the description carefully (or at all, really) and jumped on the deal, thinking that the Parebo prints would be similar to those from Artifact Uprising and hoping to give away an edition of 10, rather than the 5 I planned on initially.

The process with Parebo was similar: download the app, load images onto the phone, select images, find it difficult to select multiples of the same image, read the FAQ, try again, and then order—and the prints arrived rather quickly, but that’s where the similarities end. Continue reading “Square Print face-off: Artifact Uprising vs. Parebo”

Kentmere 100 @320?

After the fun I had pushing the K400 to 1600, I wanted to try pushing the 100 to 400, but the Espio is a fully automatic camera: it has no manual ISO dial and instead reads the DX codes on the film canisister and sets the ISO automatically.

According to various sources, it’s supposed to be easy to just scratch off the paint and fool your automatic camera, and thankfully, Wikipedia lists the DX codes, so…

Say “Bismillah” and go for it! Continue reading “Kentmere 100 @320?”

Unboxing Christian Reister’s ‘Alle Katzen Grau’

Initial thoughts: a seeming random assortment of street-type photographs in black & white. If there’s a narrative structure to the book, I missed it in the four or so minutes I flipped through the book during the unboxing. The contrast and grit are fairly high, but muted a bit by the paper and stock and printing. I’ve seen much contrastier and grittier.

Continue reading “Unboxing Christian Reister’s ‘Alle Katzen Grau’”

Harmon films – Kentmere 400 (2), this time at 1600…

Yep. I pushed Kentmere 400 to 1600 and developed it and lived to tell the tale.

Truth is, there’s not much to tell… Continue reading “Harmon films – Kentmere 400 (2), this time at 1600…”

Lunch with the LC-A

In a desperate attempt to finish off the roll of Fuji Superia XTRA 400 that had been wound up in it for almost a month, and because I quite enjoy shooting with it, I took the LC-A along on one of my #lunchbreak photowalks last week. I muddied my shoes up a good bit and had a great time, then went back to work.

Alhamdulillah. Continue reading “Lunch with the LC-A”

Return of the Espio: a brief review

When I first wrote about the Pentax Espio, I mentioned “unpromising results,” kvetched a bit about Walgreens mailing off and then keeping my negatives, and then promised to write up a proper review once I put another roll through. Well, I did put another roll through it, a year ago, back when I first started developing my own film, but then never got around to (or forgot all about) writing up a review.

After that second roll, I shelved the Espio in favor of the LC-A and, later, the FG, but when I decided to start up a roll Thanksgiving morning, both of those cameras had film in them already, so I grabbed the Espio, loaded the CR 123A battery that I had pulled out of the camera back when I shelved it to keep the date counter from draining it unnecessarily, auto-loaded a roll of film in it,* and away I went, excited to have a zoom lens with even a small range, on an automatic exposure camera with “Full Macro” stamped on the front, and also excited to see how it would perform.

How did it do? Read on to find out… Continue reading “Return of the Espio: a brief review”