What a weekend it was!

Friday: The Return of The ELVi!!

After work we headed over to the C & B Ranch to meet up with the rest of the band, then headed out to the Gasthaus in Elgin. There were seven bands playing, The ELVi were on fourth, with VBS playing last.

The show was so much fun. It was really good to see The ELVi play again… it’s been well over three years! So many people came out to see them play…. hell, Dan flew in from LA just for the show!

We finally made it home around 3am, though I don’t remember anything past like… 1am.

Saturday: Moving Day

We woke up around 9am to help my mom move. Miserable day — the weather was sunny and in the 80s — much better than rain but really a bit too warm to be carting stuff up and down stairs. We got done with that around 4pm, and met up with some friends shortly thereafter.

[Ugh. My site crapped out for a little bit and I lost half this post even though it says it had auto-saved it. I really don't want to re-type the entire rest of it again. But I will. Because I love the three of you that will read this.]

We headed to the city to see The Life and Times and Swervedriver. Of course, the trip also included a visit to Pita Inn for dinner. Chicken schwarma, yum.

Sunday: Father’s Day

Finally, a day to rest and relax…

Started the day off with a trip to Arlington Height and the cemetery, then ran to the store twice for groceries and other stuff (aka: drinks) for dinner, then to J’s parents’ house for a BBQ.

I feel like I need a few days off to recover from the weekend.

We went to the late-night flea market (8pm-2am) at the fairgrounds the other day. I picked up a Ricoh Auto Shot to add to my collection. Normally I only buy cameras that I check beforehand to make sure they’re usable… even though they’re in my collection I like to shoot a roll to test the camera out, and see the results.

This new camera though, I was unable to test. When I opened the back I saw that there was a roll of film loaded in there.

So I plopped down my $5 for the camera and took it home and developed the film. It was Plux-X Pan, so I developed it in the kitchen sink.

Unfortunately, there were only two images on the roll:

As for the camera? It doesn’t work.

Took some photos last night of AF-Kin. Click the image below to see the whole set.

Today was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, a day when — as indicated by the name — people all over the world go out with a pinhole camera and shoot photos.

The original plan was to go to Six Flags (it’s opening weekend) to shoot since the subject matter is a lot more interesting than stuff around the house or the scummy retention pond out back. But we had a late night — we made it home sometime after 3am from the Halo party at Kevin’s house — so we got a late start on the day. Justin actually didn’t get to sleep until almost 5:30am because he had to drive his parents to the airport at 4:30am. Then I check and the park closed at 5pm … so we decided to skip it. Instead we went to Justin’s parents’ house so I could photograph some flowers and such.

I’m submitting the image below to the pinholeday.org gallery; it’s my favorite of the batch. Once it’s approved you can see it on their site here.

You can see the rest of the shots I took today right here.

I need a new scanner. I have an Epson Perfection 3170 Photo which has been my faithful home-photo-lab companion for years. But I think a bulb burned out in the lid, because if you look at the photos above you’ll notice a dark band across the center of the image. It’s only an issue when scanning medium format negatives — 35mm and flatbed are fine — so I’m hesitant to throw it out since it works great otherwise. Maybe I’ll give it to someone who won’t need to use it for transparencies.

I’d love to get a dedicated negative scanner but I don’t have a grand or two lying around to spare. So I’ll probably get the more reasonably priced Epson 4490.

Today I dug out the Polaroid camera (I think it was a Square Shooter) that I had hacked up a few years ago in an attempt to make a Polaroid back for my Holga (I stopped the project because coincidentally I got Holaroid from Craigslist right after I started hacking).

I cut off the bulk of the front of the camera, covered the big hole with some foam and gaffer’s tape, and stuck a pinhole on the front (the pinhole was made from a section of a soda can).

I didn’t measure the size of the pinhole or the focal length, so I have no idea what the approximate aperture is — and therefore have no ballpark idea how long my exposures should be. I took two test photos inside the house — each exposure was for about five minutes (another thing I didn’t measure).

Interesting subject, I know.

I really, really like this camera. Everything is relatively sharp (Polaroids and pinholes generally are a bit fuzzy by default), and the view is extremely wide angle. The camera was on the edge of the sink, so only about 1-2 feet away from the faucet, but look how far away it looks!

The wall was about 2-3 feet away from the camera in the above photo. This demonstrates just how wide of an angle this camera has — you can see both the front door (left) and the King Kong poster on the stairs on the right. Well, you can see it in the actual print; the scan isn’t the greatest.

I can’t wait to test this camera outside… and I’m definitely shooting with this camera for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (April 27th, mark your calendars).

My most recent camera purchase was of a Holga 135BC toy camera. My New Year’s resolution was to not buy so many cameras and photography-related stuff… but yeah, that didn’t last long.

I already have a number of “regular” Holga cameras but I thought I’d give this one a try since it seemed pretty neat.

Yesterday I finished my first roll and developed it, and I gotta say… I really like what I get from this camera. Being winter and low on daylight hours I haven’t had a chance to shoot many interesting things (all we have around here is snow), but this little camera will definitely get a workout once spring/summer hits. I took some indoor flash photos that turned out surprisingly well, so I may make this my “party camera.”

The whole set can be viewed here, but below are three of the better shots from the roll.

Ilford HP5+ (iso400), developed in Diafine

… is finally done. It’s taken some hard work (we did most of the work ourselves) and quite a bit of time (and money!) but the living room remodeling is complete. Just in time for the Super Bowl next week. Party at Kelly’s!

Before:

After:

I suggest you click on the photos to view them on Flickr so you can see them at a larger size. Plus, there are a lot of notes on them explaining what everything is. You know, if you really care about stuff like that.

(note to self: adjust the column width so I can fit larger photos without messing up the layout)

Did you go out with your hunk ‘o plastic and shoot some photos for World Toy Camera Day? I did.

We went over to Didier Farms to get some pumpkins. I shot three rolls of film in my new Diana+, and outside of the last roll (I didn’t realize it was set on Bulb), I’m pretty happy with the results.

click to view entire set

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Links: toycamera.com | WTCD Flickr group