Analog Therapy: Expired Kodak TMax 100 – Konica Hexar RF – Voigtländer Ultron 28mm f/2.
On the day I took these photos I felt under attack. From myself. I was feeling uncharacteristically down for no reason I could pin down. Then serendipity stepped in. And I do not believe in coincidences. Reference the faith system of your choice here. And they are all faith based. They do call it the big bang theory for a reason. Let me stop myself there before I start a fight I will walk away from out of a lack of interest in debating personal belief systems… You do you. Where was I? Right. Under attack followed by analog therapy.
The serendipity? Two long time friends, a term I do not throw around, called me back to back out of the blue. That alone picked up my spirits. Conversations and laughs were had. I felt a bit more myself, but the attacks were not over that day. This time internal and external. Kind of. I decided to go back to Duke Gardens as it was not closed as I had thought in my last two posts. But as I arrived only then did I remember that parking was now only available on the weekend… dang.
A self own admittedly. I first decided to repeat my earlier pivot. Downtown Durham. Parked. Then I became my own worst enemy briefly. What is the point? I already did this a couple of days ago. I drove off and then parked again determined to run through a roll of film anyway. Then the external attack. Ok, attack is strong. An inanimate object will not attack me. Chalk it up to stuff happens. The rangefinder on one of my favorite film rigs was misaligned vertically. No big. Have found that giving it a gentle tap on top will put it right. Not optimal, but it has worked in the past. But this time that is not what happened. The rangefinder went completely wonky. It was now severely misaligned vertically and horizontally. Useless. Sat back down in my car dejected for a moment. Then I decided to tap the camera on a different side to see if I could at least get through this roll of film. So I tapped the camera on its back. And what do you know? The rangefinder was perfectly aligned once again. Cool.
Optimal? Heck no. This will need to be looked at for sure. I’ll probably see if KEH can work the same magic they did with the 240 after it initially arrived with a badly calibrated rangefinder.
But it got me through this roll of film on this day. And my mood improved significantly as a result.
The rig mentioned.
Rangefinder issue aside the Konica Hexar RF has been a fantastic camera and the Voigtlander Ultron 28mm f/2 has proven to be a wonderful lens for film…
…and digital.
The film for the day was a roll of expired Kodak TMax 100 I picked up on the cheap at my local camera shop, developed at home with Cinestill df96. After my bit of back and forth, that night I lost a bit of sunlight, and combined with some images falling apart likely owing to the expired film some were tossed. Nothing Earth-shattering. Just getting a roll of film through the camera. Here are the survivors.
Thoughts.
The film.
Kodak TMax 100 was fine. It fell apart a bit due to it being a little long in tooth, but I did get some images I genuinely liked. Still, my current favorite black and white fim remains on top and it benefits from being quite affordable. CatLABS X-Film 320 shot at ISO 100 when developed with Cinestill df96.
More broadly…
I am left with this. Despite the little screen in my hand screaming nothing but gloom and doom at me every day there is good in the world.
Good people.
Healthy distractions.
The question is what will I choose to focus on. My missteps? the mechanical failure of inanimate objects? A society seemingly determined to self destruct? Greed and evil incarnate charging the gate? Or those few things I do have control over. Those good people and things in the world.
I will not ignore the former. Self delusion is not healthy either. I will speak to it when the proper opportunity arises. But I choose to focus on the good as much as possible.
Welp. Enough of that for now.
Happy capturing.
-ELW
Eric L. Woods 
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