I had a bad photography day today. I got the film scans back that are making it possible for me to get my 365 photos caught up and posted, and they were not very good. They were very bad. It was three rolls of film all shot on my Pentax 645N, and I had only shot one roll on that camera prior to these. The feedback email from The FIND Lab said something like, "exposure on these rolls was great! But there seemed to be focus issues throughout..." And then I looked at the three rolls in disbelief that they could be so bad. So many out of focus photos. And beyond that, so many photos of the same things I have been taking photos of over and over and over. I know it is part of experimenting with film stocks and cameras and trying to figure things out, and it is true that my emphasis needs to be on nailing exposure and not as much on composition. But yes, just a bunch of photos where focus fell on something random, and that wouldn't have been very good even if they had been in focus. After I sat there looking at them for a while, I remembered that there was a reason that the photos were out of focus, and that I had anticipated it would happen, but forgot. I shot most of those three rolls using the three point focus mode on the Pentax instead of the single point focus mode. I won't go into the long explanation for why three points isn't actually better than one, but I figured out that for my needs, I need to be on single point focus. The other thing is that I shot at 2.8, wide open, fairly often. And that is different on a medium format camera than on a full frame camera. I need to hang around F4 if I want to improve my chances for getting things in focus. The lens I have for the camera, the FA 75mm 2.8, has some limitations, and another lens might work better for the way I shoot (especially indoors). The 75mm lens has a minimum focusing distance of two feet- indoors, that makes it hard to take detail shots or to frame things the way I am inclined to. My next scans come back early next week, and hopefully they will be better. I would feel better about investing in an additional (inexpensive) Pentax lens if I could get a roll back from that camera that knocks my socks off.
If they aren't great, that is ok too. Right now, the process of learning film is the only thing I am focusing on. So the quality of my photos is going to be worse for awhile. Then I will start a light class, and that will be where I put my energy (probably still shooting a lot of film), and maybe things will get better. In mid-July, I will start a flash class, and I expect that may cause things to take quite a dive. You never know though, maybe I will be amazing with artificial light. Tonight, just to get back on solid footing, I took my Nikon D750 outside with my macro lens for some no messing around regular old late evening flower shots. I had to make sure I still remembered how to do that. That is my therapy!
And tomorrow... back to film.
Here are my shots for week 24.
