March Film | Personal Project
Last month I wrote about how I was having trouble with really overly grainy film. SO grainy that I was ready to chuck my camera and start over with a new one...Glad I didn't.After attending PhotoLUSH earlier this month I met Joe & Patience...this is how they describe who they are on their website..."you can find Joe & Patience in Northwest Washington, likely with both digital and film cameras around their necks, holding a latte with one hand and the hands of their children with the other"Okay. Great image of who they are, right? But it goes beyond that, I was explaining my trouble with the image quality to Joe and he took the time to take a look at what was going on and messaged me with some suggestions. I mean really?? Who does that...with all the crazy busy stuff that goes on in their lives he took the time to help me out. My respect for Joe & Patience jumped about 10 notches that day.WHAT I LEARNEDJoe thought the problem was not the film, or the camera, but the low quality of scans. Can I just be brutally honest (even if I am horribly ashamed and embarrassed to admit this) I was getting my film processed and scanned at local labs such as Costco or even...gasp...Walgreens. I don't have hundreds of dollars to spend on film development, especially when I am re-learning film, working part time, running a business and raising a child. So I took the path of least resistance and dropped off my film at whatever lab was on my way to work. When Joe mentioned the scans I nearly fell out of my chair, of COURSE it would be something that simple.So after some quick research for an affordable lab I found The Darkroom and decided to give it a try. I selected about 10 images taken over the course of the year, I tried to choose different colors, settings, seasons ~ I wanted to see if I could get a good representation of the film. I got the scans back about a week ago and I can see a noticeable difference!! The grain is decreased, the colors are richer, the contrast is better. I still have SO much to learn and I have a renewed dedication to try again after some encouragement from Joe & Patience so I'm hoping that my April film post will blow your minds.All the images from the scans, so nothing new to show this month because of my little scanning crisis. The original local lab scans are on the left, the Darkroom scans are on the right. Outside of putting the scans into collages there has been no retouching or editing. What do you think? Is it worth the couple extra dollars to get a decent quality scan?? Yeah. Lesson learned.
