The disappointment
and a new toy
Life doesn’t always run smooth, we all know that. But most of the time we accept that and we get on with it.
Photography is life or at least, part of life. As life itself it doesn’t always run smooth. You can read here on Substack loads of examples: from
explaining how one gets only few usable frames from a 36 frames roll of film, to experiencing camera difficulties at the time of the shoot and to and explaining how to prepare and be ready for anything.Lately I was the victim of disappointment coming from photography. At the start of the year, I posted an article regarding one of my plans for 2024, you can read it here:
Ricoh camera loaded with film, me ready for a new experience (I’ve never kept a diary in my life), all set for the adventure. Everything was ok, the whole experience runed smoothly until I got back the film from the lab. The Ricoh camera is a fully automatic one, that’s the reason I choose it for the diary, it’s light, compact and fits in any pocket. As an automatic camera, it has autofocus. Or it supposes to have. Looking at the results, it is clearly to see that the autofocus is working ok-ish only in the bright sunlight.
Even when the camera is using the incorporated flash, which by the way also turns on automatically, is struggling with the focus. Being a film camera I had no way to know about this problem. So, yes, I am disappointed with the result, so disappointed that I decided not to use the camera anymore.
What is this meaning? Will I stop the diary? No way!
Few weeks ago, I went to a car boot sale in search for some photo opportunities and I picked up a Taiwan made, fully plastic, fully automatic Olympia camera. Never heard of Olympia cameras before and looking online I can’t find information about them. The camera is huge, as big as my DSLR but being plastic is very light. I’ll give it a try and let you know after the first roll of 35mm film. Wish me luck!
I don’t know the rest of the roll, but the ones you shared are great. I love the blur, because it gives the photo the feel of a different era. I am glad you are not giving up. And what a fancy look for a plastic camera! 😃
I get your frustration, it's hard when you visualise an end result and the lab send something completely different but I have to say that in this case, I love the softness of these photos. They have so much mood and atmosphere that sharpness might take away from them.