Practice

A scene outside The Junction, a shopping and entertainment complex in Ogden, UT. These stone blocks seemed like they might have been extracted from the apartments across the street, thereby forming the windows. 

As I mentioned briefly in another post, I recently acquired a Kodak Stereo Camera from my local Deseret Industries. 

It was a very exciting find. I mean, look, old cameras are fun, stereoscopic photography is fun, finding new ways to connect my photography classes to the past is fun, it's all fun. I haven't shot on film since I was a teen, and the thought of doing it again was also extremely fun. 

But I knew I had to include my dad. I'm more of a filmmaker than a still photographer, but my dad has been a photographer longer than I've been alive. I'm sure I picked up my interest in it from being around him, and this was exactly the kind of thing he'd love to see. So I bought it, for significantly less than you can do online, and took it over to his house. We looked at it together. Everything seemed to work. The shutter was smooth and the controls worked. The lenses focused easily. The aperture adjustments were fine. We opened the back to check out the film loading, and found an old roll of Kodachrome II in there. Unfortunately, it was mostly outside the canister so if there was anything on it, it was ruined. It was also torn, so we couldn't have rewound it if we'd known about it ahead of time. It was also upside down for some reason, which was weird. That made it hard to get out. 

But we eventually did it, and checked the loading and advancement functions. Everything seemed to work as it should, and while the camera showed some signs of age, it seemed to be in very good condition. So we determined to test it out. I ordered some film (Ilford HP5 plus, for those who care to know) which arrived a few days ago. Of course it was black and white film, because if I'm going to be shooting in stereo, it's going to be in black and white, at least to start with. We're heading out next week for the tests. I'm pumped. 

However, I'm also aware of my inexperience in this area. I mean, I teach photography, among other things, for a living, and I know the theory behind shooting on film, but I've never done it with anything but a disposable camera, apart from maybe a few shots on my dad's camera, and never as an adult. I've never done it with any idea of what I was actually doing. 

Now, I know enough to know how little I know about this, and my excitement is tempered by that knowledge. So I've been practicing. 

I've been practicing composition in more film-like aspect ratios. I've been practicing shooting in black and white instead of shooting in color and then converting it. I've been practicing calculating camera settings from different light meter readings. I still don't feel very prepared for this shoot, but it sure has been fun. 

Anyway, here are a couple shots I got, just from my phone, while I was out shooting with my photography class a couple days ago. They may not be great, but that's OK. They're just for practice.