Neil Alexander | Photographer » Lomo

From Windows to Mac…..

Neil — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:14:00 +0000

Regular followers of my blog will have noticed that there has been a marked down turn in the frequency of posts of late. The main reason for this is not sheer laziness as some will have assumed, but I’ve taken the plunge and gone and got myself a MacBook Pro.
While fathoming out how to use the machine, install software, tweak preferences etc was a fairly straight forward process, finding alternatives to some of the Windows based software that I was used to using has proved somewhat more challenging. I used to use Windows Live Writer (www.live.com) to write blog posts, and I was extremely happy with this piece of software. It did exactly what I wanted and more. It was reliable and the UI was first class.
After a great deal of research, and trying to find some blogging software for OSX that will work with DasBlog, I ended up going with ecto (illuminex.com). It has a cool UI, and all the functionality that I want appears to be there. Unfortunately I just cannot get it to publish articles to my blog and herein lies the reason for the delays. I had toyed with changing from DasBlog to WordPress, but after reading that several other bloggers had tried this and it proved to be a very protracted process, I decided that it was best to leave it as it was (I’m very happy with DasBlog) and find an application that I can use.
I’ve put calls into support, posted to forums, scoured the net but at this stage I’m none the wiser. So I’m just warning you guys that posts may not be as frequent as I would like for the time being.
OK. Enough of the crap, now let’s get down to some photography…..
It’s been killing me not shooting any film lately, so I whacked a roll of T-Max in my Lomo a week or so ago and shot some night street stuff, all pretty much from the hip. Once I’d finished the roll, it dawned on me that I was actually out of T-Max dev. So after a few days of carrying the spent films around in my pocket trying to track down some developer, I ended up popping into DS Colour Labs in Didsbury and getting them to process it. The guys in the store explained that they didn’t use the Kodak developer, but did use one that wasn’t all that different.
So when I went to pick them up a couple of days later, I was really disappointed! The negs & scans were so washed out and completely lacking in grain. The reason I love Kodak’s T-Max is the high contrast, fine grain gritiness that this film produces and these qualities are further enhanced by developing this film in the chemicals that Kodak have produced to go with it. So when I saw DS Colour Labs attempt, it prompted me to get straight onto Silverprint and order a job lot of T-Max dev! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking DS – I understand that they have a business to run, and it would be totally uneconomical for them to have developed the roll in T-Max. I just learnt a valuable lesson – if you want something doing properly, then do it yourself!!!
Fortunately all was not last, and Nik software managed to save the day. I just adore the Silver Efex software and after processing the roll as T-Max in Silver Efex I had managed to pretty much save the film. Here is a frame as it was originally processed. And here is the same frame after processing with Silver Efex – see the difference!!

My Lomo (update)

Neil — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:27:20 +0000

OK, feeling particularily stupid now.

I’ve eventually got response from the cockney Latvian I bought my Lomo from. He suggested I made sure the batteries were the right way round. Batteries…..I didn’t read anything about batteries in the instructions (they were in Russian, so I could just about be forgiven here)…..and not watch batteries! Surely they didn’t have tiny silver oxide button batteries in 1823 or whenever the camera was invented!
A quick trip to Superdrug later, and now I have a little red LED through the viewfinder to let me know that my batteries are in, the right way round and working. Fat use that is. Maybe a little LED to say “Oi dumbass, where’s your batteries??” would have been more useful!
So I now have a film in 1 hour processing – lets hope that there is the odd exposed image on there this time……
Cretin!

My Lomo

Neil — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 09:25:55 +0000

My new toy arrived the other day – I want a small film camera that I can carry around in my pocket all the time rather than lugging an entire camera bag and contents. So I got an original Lomo LC-A Kompakt from a guy in Latvia (well I actually though he was in London, but the camera came from Latvia). I have been desperate to get out and use it, so rather than just shoot 1 roll of B&W, get it dev’d and then make sure all is tickety boo with the camera, I shot like a maniac with it, and have just finished fourth roll. Stupidly (with hindsight) I shot 1 B&W & 1 slide, so had to wait nearly a week for it to get processed with being away at the weekend.
And the results? One word, disastrous!
Collected first 2 rolls of film from DS Colour Labs this afternoon and there are no exposures on either. After getting a detailed lecture on how to load a roll of 35mm from the chappy behind the counter by forwarding the film on for at least 2 frames with the back open to make sure its caught (I used to be able to get at least 39 out of a 36 with my old OM10), it became apparent to us both that the shutter is not opeing.
I have emailed my Cockney Latvian friend, and have not yet left any feedback yet (I was waiting for the film to be processed before I did that), so watch this space……
Disappointed.