LS-2000
August 16th, 2004 byIt’s been a very long time since I’ve shot any 35mm film. Tonight I was rifling through a folder full of medium format negatives and I ran across some very old and funky 35mm negatives from my days in St. Louis. On one roll the negatives were actually severely damaged (not by me) and are pretty much unprintable. On the other roll the images were just fine, if not a bit high in contrast. I decided to scan a few just for kicks.
I ran over to my friend’s place to pick up a machine that could run OS 9 for my old Nikon LS-2000 film scanner, ran back home and set it all up. And the second a preview scan came up on screen I was completely overcome with a feeling of nostalgia for 35mm photography, portrait photography, and to a lesser extent, the darkroom.
I’m likely never to do anything with this, or any other images from these rolls, but I have sworn an oath to myself to shoot at least one portrait a month. And to shoot with film a bit more frequently. You see, because the cool thing about shooting film is that it still has the ability to surprise me. Even though the images I scanned tonight are so horribly messed up, I was jazzed with what I got. They have a funky feeling to them that I could not have created intentionally. Digital photography never does that for me.
It’s cool. I got a ton done tonight. Got a lot of work done, dug into some old photos, printed a few photos and finally finished up making a frame. All good things.