Category Archives: Film Photography

{No Time Like the Present} Pentax Spotmatic SPII, 2018

This will be the first in a series of photos that were taken so long ago that I really don’t know how to present them. I went an extended period of time without getting film developed, and as a result, have a lot of new photos to share that aren’t exactly recent. So, I figured there’s no time like the present to share them!


Today’s post is made up of photos taken in 2018 with my Pentax Spotmatic SPII (my $7.99 Salvation Army score from 2017.) I’m glad I got the film developed now. It reminded me of how much I like the Takumar lens that came with the camera.

These photos in particular just feel like every photo I took in 2017 for my daily photo project. Just photos documenting everyday little things.

Mini vegan chocolate cake with cream cheese icing

Some narcissus flowers (I think…)

My niece modeling the Legend of Zelda necklace I bought her

Mini vegan carrot cake with cream cheese icing

At Area 51 ice cream

It’s called fashion, sweetie

My niece modeling the Death Note necklace I got her

Vegan raspberry chocolate chip blondie bars

One of my favorite things: emptying the change out of my bluebird of happiness coin bank

Vegan apple bread

Nature-y stuff around my family’s property

Pineapple painted gold, from a women’s brunch I attended at church

 

Pentax Spotmatic SPII • SMC Takumar 55mm f/1.8 • Kodak Ultramax 400

{Square in an Instant}

Lemme tell you: I LOVE square photos. I miss Polaroid (okay, so they’re still a thing, but for more money and less awesome results.) I was so excited a few years ago when Instax came out with a square format. I was already shooting the Mini and Wide Instax formats, so the addition of little square photos excited me.

The Fuji Instax SQ6 is a camera I picked up in November 2018, right before going on a little vacation to the Smoky Mountains. As in, it arrived the night before we left, and I took it with me and started using it on our trip without any prior experience with the camera. This is not something I would normally recommend one doing, because you should not risk vacation photos by using a camera you have no experience with. But on a mostly automatic instant film camera, the risk wasn’t that high. The SQ6 operates similarly to the Instax Mini 90 (which I’ll discuss at some point in this post,) so I felt I could be comfortable using it for vacation shots.

I meant to actually review this camera after I’d used it for a bit, but that never happened because I just kept on shooting it, figuring out how to get the best results as I went along. That’s why these photos are from late 2018/early 2019.

A few selection from my previously posted Smoky Mountain blog:

And now for a bunch of photos I’d intended to use for a review!

A few Christmas double exposures. Catch me in one of them?

Macro shots are not easy to frame on this camera, as evidenced by this photo

Another example of tricky macro mode photography

Snapshots from the small town where I live

The bathroom at the dental college where my niece has her orthodontic work done

I’m actually glad I took these photos, because the gas station has since been refurbished and doesn’t have the same paint job or the gas pump on their sign anymore

Macro, in an instance where framing wasn’t too critical

These were hard to photograph without getting glare on the photo – but yay for lit signs at Bass Pro in Memphis

I am a Man mural in downtown Memphis near the National Civil Rights Museum

I told my niece that, if she had social media, this would have been a good profile picture (also taken in downtown Memphis)

This is a double exposure that wasn’t worth the trouble – I stepped on a spike from the honey locust tree and impaled my shoe/toe

(there are a few SQ 6 photos I really like that are in a post from last year and below are a few from that same time period, as a bonus)

I really wanted this Instax SQ6 to be just like a square version of the Instax Mini 90, but it’s not. I’m very happy you can choose to turn the flash off on the SQ6 (which isn’t the case for most Instax cameras,) but some of the extra features that both the SQ6 and Mini 90 share in common are much less functional on the former than on the latter. They both have double exposure, macro, infinity focus, and light/dark exposure compensation, but on the SQ6, you can’t combine any of those features because they’re all selected through the same mode button. More specifically, my complaint is that the light/dark compensation needs to be its own button like on the Mini 90.

Double exposures are hard to do when you can’t change the amount of exposure they’re receiving; you end up with an overexposed picture because you exposed the film twice  without being able to dial in less exposure for each shot on that frame of film. Also, what if you need to focus to infinity but need to dial in more or less exposure? If Fuji would make a square format camera that’s almost exactly like the SQ6, but with the addition of a separate light/dark button, I’d be IN!

 

{Getting to Know You} Yashica T2

Well, I started this post in 2018. The photos from the first roll of film shared in it were taken in 2017. The second roll was from 2018. I felt like the post was a little incomplete, so I planned on shooting another roll with the Yashica T2 to add to the photos I already had, but apparently that didn’t happen. I mean, I don’t really have an excuse for not shooting a third roll with this camera in 2019, but I think we can al agree that I have several excuses for bit getting it done in 2020 😂

But onward and upward.


Originally drafted in 2018:

My 2017 thrift shop camera finds were EPIC. Imagine my shock when, a few weeks after finding a Yashica T4 at the lowly Goodwill Outlet, I found a Yashica T2 at the same store! While the T4 was $2, the T2 set me back a whopping $5 😀

Yashica T2 specs:

  • 35mm f/3.5 Carl Zeiss Tessar T* lens
  • Automatic exposure
  • Shutter speeds: 1/8s-1/500s
  • Accepts DX-coded film, speeds 50-1600 ISO
  • Built-in flash
  • Shooting distance: 1m – infinity (3.3ft – infinity)

I wasn’t expecting to care much about this camera. It is pretty much the older sibling of the T4. They have the same lens, but the T2 is bigger, more bulky, louder, and with fewer features. However – don’t ask me how or why – but somehow I like the way the photos from the T2 look better. Even though the lens is probably identical in both of them? There’s more warmth to them.

(some of this first roll were featured in my 2017 daily photo project, but it’s been long enough since that project occurred that I don’t mind posting some of them here too.)

Roll #1, December 2017

 

Roll #2, July-ish 2018

Okay, this roll was mostly an impromptu paparazzi style photo shoot after my niece got a haircut, but I managed to fit in some shots of other things too 😀

 

(Both rolls were Fujicolor 200 film)

There are some things to not like about this camera, mainly its boxy design (of its era though) and the fact that, to ensure the flash doesn’t fire, you have to hold down a tiny button on top of the camera whilst pushing the shutter button.

Flash off and fill flash buttons

It’s also loud. As are most auto advance cameras from this period of time. But I like the Yashica T2 despite these little quibbles. Especially for a $5 thrift outlet store find during 2017, the year of the thrift shop camera!

Side note:

There is (what I would describe as) a “smoky filter” over the lens in lieu of a traditional lens cover that would open up when the camera is powered on. I thought I had a defective camera on my hands because the filter only slides away when a photo is actually being taken. Turns out that’s how it’s SUPPOSED to operate. Just thought I would share that in case you get a Yashica T2 and think it’s broken because the lens cover doesn’t move away when you turn the camera on!

{Coffee Days}

More days of going to coffee shops: Coffee Central, Lowfi Coffee, and Vice & Virtue Coffee.

(Pre-pandemic, in early 2020!)

Coffee Central

I need this wall in my life

(Apparently I got a smudge on the lens after these photos were taken, so the rest of the roll looks like I was using a soft focus filter. Or MAYBE it just looks like a smudged lens *facepalm*)

Modeling her new Lowfi hoodie 

Lowfi Coffee

My baby, trying her hand at some film photography 

Delicious cappuccino made with beans that were aged in empty bourbon barrels 

Vice & Virtue Coffee

Photos taken with a Minolta STsi, on Kodak Gold 200 film