Back from the shop

I recently sent an old SLR to a repair shop to be refurbished. It's an Olympus OM-1 that I received from an extremely generous reader. It needed a tune up, and the shop did that and more—replacing old parts and even adding a new focusing screen. As soon as I got the camera back, I loaded up a roll of film (or at least, a half roll) and started shooting. I'm still working on focusing—I've decided I'm bad at focusing everything other than a rangefinder—but I'm mostly pleased with my first set of photos. The initial batch were in black and white. I used Kodak Tri-X, with an orange filter attached when I needed a bit of drama.

These first photos are just snapshots from around Washington D.C.

I shot the rest of the roll while I was visiting Charlottesville, Virginia for a talk. I brought the orange filter along, hence the extremely dramatic photo of Alderman library. It's a bit much as far as effects go, but I wanted to give that filter a spin. This is also my first use of the 24mm lens I bought for the Olympus. It's not the sharpest lens I own, but it has a certain classic character that I like a lot.

Gone Camera Gone

For the last few months, I've used a Nikon L35AF for most of my day to day 35mm snaps. It's a great camera! Small, lightweight, with a sharp lens and lots of character. Unfortunately, about a week ago, I dropped it while biking to work. It hit the pavement as I went down hill and promptly shattered into plastic and glass. RIP.

Luckily, I didn't lose any photos. And I have a back-up camera! A recently refurbished Olympus OM-1 that was gifted to me from a reader, with a 35mm lens I picked up from eBay. Those photos are forthcoming. In the meantime, here are the last few shots I took before losing the camera to my negligence. The film is Fuji Provia 100f, a vibrant film that I'm moving away from because it's a bit too expensive and not versatile enough.

(Also, you may notice that I'm doing my photo blogging here at my website, instead of at my VSCO Journal. Long story short is that VSCO is real cumbersome. This isn't a perfect solution—it's a bit of a hassle to edit on my iPad—but it's good enough.)