I love my little 1 cent Olympus Trip!
I just got some photos back today that i took over the weekend, and im quite happy with them. One thing im not happy about though is my scanning of them, its quite poor, so i’m thinking of investing in a dedicated scanner or atleast getting the lab to do it.
Anyway, these were taken in and around Circular Quay on an extremely sunny day. The glare was insane, and i was pretty worried about how the photos would come out. Luckily they came out pretty good in most cases (better than the digital scan shows also), but i’d like to go back on a day that has some better light for photography.
Anyway, here are some that i’ve scanned so far (still have half a roll to go).

Whilst i’m waiting for film to be developed from a new photo lab, i’ll post up some pictures i took with my mobile phone yesterday.
No, mobile phone pics are scraping the barrel when it comes to photography. Its a legitimate photographic tool just like any other device in my opinion.
The thing is, my mobile phone camera isnt the latest and greatest. Its a W660i with a 2 mega-pixel cameras i picked up traveling through Hong Kong last year. I like the Sony Ericsson’s after changing over from Nokia originally. I’ve had two Sony’s now, and prefer their menu system,m and above all their battery life. I like not having to charge my phone for almost a week! (My old Sony lasted 10 days without a charge when i was in Canada once).
Anyway, yesterday i caught a ferry into the city (theres a ferry stop near my house). Its amazing how you can effectively get a tour of the greatest harbour in the world for less than $3. Anywhere else you’d be paying atleast 10 times that. The weather was perfect (mid to high 20’s), and the harbour looked terrific. I’ve been to many harbour’s around the world, but Sydney is still by far the most beautiful. The idea was to walk around get some lunch and take some photos with my little Olympus trip. We went for a walk along Circular Quay after getting off the ferry, then walked around the rocks, got some lunch and listened to generic live music which was pretty average. We (my girlfriend and brother) then decided to walk up one of the pylons of the Sydney Harbour bridge. We felt so much like tourists but it was well worth it. From there we could see most of the CDB and North Sydney, aswell as Sydney Harbour. Took some pictures with my Olympus then took a few with the mobile. The Opera house was particularly prominent. Its white surface stood out amongst the deep blue water. The harbour was pretty active that day also. Everyone was out and about as it was part of the Australia Day long weekend.Well here are some photos from the Harbour Bridge, and one from the ferry.

It’s easy to see how much fine detail is lacking from the mobile phone pictures. The camera seems to of over sharpened them also. But the colours can be surprisingly accurate, and im kind of impressed how it can pick up certain faint detail like the clouds in #3 and #4. These were very faint to the naked eye, so im curious as to why it picked up these but not other details that would seem more obvious. Oh well, its just crappy camera phone after all!

Just a photo i took near my house. t was a very Aqua Marine sort of day..
Had a go bringing it out in photoshop in a desaturated kind of way.
Might go around taking some arty farty pics with my Holga tomorrow… :p

Lesson learnt for me.. dont waste time with cheap and shitty photo labs.
All of this happened to me about a week or two ago, but i’ve only got around to writing about it now.
I shot a few new rolls and thought i’d try out a little photo lab just a few hundred metres from me. I thought “Wouldnt it be great if i can get photos developed at a place less than a minutes walk form me”
HOW WRONG I WAS…
I dropped the film off, told them not to rush as i’d pick it up the next day. All seemed fine. Went in the next day to pay and receive my photos. As i was walking home i opened the packet up and started looking at my photos. ** First mistake - must always check photos before leaving store!
Looking at the photos i could tell immediately that thing just werent right.
With one of the rolls in particular i made a special note that i was experimenting with a few lighting effects etc, so asked them not to adjust low/high key photos for example. If something is dark, leave it dark. They said this was fine, no problem at all…
I dont know, maybe i was speaking in another language and they were just saying yes to whatever i asked them, because they totally ignored what i asked. When i got my photos back the machine they used must of automatically tried to compensate, so most of the prints are completely off - they look terrible. It looks like they’ve just pumped up the exposure compensation setting, and most of the photos are overly grainy, and hazy like theres been a light leak (of which my camera has none).
If they couldnt do it, why didn’t they just say “No, im sorry we cant do that for you. Everything is automated and we have no control how they turn out.” I would of had no problem with that.

Ok, not the end of the world right? I still have the negatives yeah?
Yes and No.
Yes as in, i do have the negatives. But no as in, they arent exactly complete.
You see, to go along with the terrible prints, i have some negatives that have been cut up collage style. The photo below is an example of what i mean.

You can see that the top negative has pretty much had 2/3 cut off, and bottom negative has had some of the side cut off, not much, but still noticeable. These are just two example of three rolls that have been effected. About 60% are effected.
WTF? Did they get the blind work experience kid to cut them up!?

I dont know what else to say beside i’m never going back to this place again. Im just glad i didnt have anything particularly important on the film.
It’s safe to say i wont be going back to this place again!
Dont make the same mistake as me…

Seen Dr Strangelove?… Maybe not..
Anyway… I was given a Holga 120 GCFN for Christmas and thought that its about time i tried to shoot a few things with it.
Yes, i accept the fact that Holgas have pretty much been done to death and they’re looked down upon by many. But i take photos for fun, and a Holga is a toy camera, so it seems pretty natural to give one a go at some point. I’ve seen some amazing photos produced by Holgas, so i’m looking forward to running a few rolls of film through mine.
Now, if you know anything about Holgas, you’ll know that their built shit (to but it bluntly). That’s no big deal if you know this and accept it. But if you’re expecting a Holga to produce the same image quality as other medium format cameras on the market, you’ll be disappointed.
What Holga’s do have though is an unpredictability factor. A “feature” that can give some amazing results. Lens flares, Light leaks, Vignetting, double exposures, over/under exposures, soft focusing, all the norm with Holga’s.
“Err that sounds shit. Why would you want that? Just by some good L glass(Canon) and take photos of sunsets and macro insects with the rest of us”
As much as i like macro photos of fly heads, and sunset pictures of the Sydney harbour bridge, i want to try out being a Holga snob for a little bit.

Ok, now as much as all of those unique Holga “features” are good and everything, i want to get rid of some of them.
The first thing i’ll be doing is some some flocking on my holga.
Holga Flocking :
Ok, the awesome cheap ass plastic that Holga uses is shiny as hell. This is pretty bad for the insides of a camera. You dont want light flying around inside your camera as it can impact on the image “quality” from the Holga. By flocking your camera you can stop all this from happening and should increase the contrast of your photos.
How do i flock? Well, its pretty easy, and only takes a matter of minutes.

1. Get some matt black spray paint. Hardware stores and hobby shops are good for this, just make sure its matt not gloss, the whole idea is to stop light reflections.

2. Mask up your Holga. Cover the the shutter assembly, battery terminals, foam, etc with some sort of masking tape. The idea is to spray all the shiny plastic surfaces that arent really do anything. Also make sure you mask the red window on the film door so it doesnt get sprayed.

3. Lay out newspaper in a well ventilated room. Optional.

4. Start spraying the plastic parts in long even strokes. Several light coats are better than one heavy coat. Make sure you spray into all the smaller tricky areas.

5. Allow to dry before assembling. It’ll be stupid if you start grabbing pieces that are still wet, unless you’re going for the rough fingerprint finish.

Your done! Your Holga is now Flocked. The masking takes about 10 times as long as the actual spraying. Just dont rush anything, because if you do and make a mistake it’ll turn a 15 minutes job into a 1 hour job.

Below is a photo to illustrate the differences between the normal plastic and the flocked plastic. As you can see the difference is pretty noticeable.

Check out my sweet Typography…

And the whole lot:

Average photos, but you get the idea.

It took about 15 minutes in total.
Now all thats left is to take some photos. Oh, and to find a place that develops 120 film. I had a recent disaster with the place i’ve been using near my house, so i wont be going back there. Details to follow next time.

Seen this little guy a few times in and around the CBD. Felt like getting a photo of him before he’s tagged over or pulled down.

Went down to La Perouse a little whie ago with a friend to kill some time. Took a few photos, but never really looked at them after they were uploaded onto the computer. The other night i stumbled across them again, and thought i’d try out some funky post processing on them. My skills with photoshop are very limited, as i dont spend much time on it at all, especially editing photos. I usually lose interest after about 5 minutes. Thats what attracts me to film photography, all the work is done for you! haha.. well not exactly, but you know what i mean.
Anyway, so this is one of the pictures i was working on. It’s still not 100% but thought i’d post it up anyway, as i kind of like it.
Oh, and if you dont know anything about La Perouse, here is some light reading for you : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Perouse,_New_South_Wales

Been going through the restored files on my old hard drive today and found some pictures i had totally forgotten about. They are all from my Asia trip last year, mostly in Japan though.
Its a nice finding old pictures you’d forgotten about