Scanning my own film

Since I got the F5, I’ve unsurprisingly been shooting more film. I just shot a roll of Cinestill, which is motion picture film that they’ve done something to so you can shoot it in a film camera and develop it C41, which is the standard developing process for color film since forever.

Cinestill has some troubling corporate tendencies. I am not dismissing these, but when I bought the roll of film I was not really aware of them. I’m probably not going to shoot any more of their film, but I am ALSO not that interested in discussing the company.

I recently picked up a used Valoi Easy35 from someone on the Dupont Photo Walk and I’ve been using that to scan film. It’s great for scanning my dad’s and my grandfather’s old stuff, but I’m struggling a bit to get results I’m happy with for my just-shot film.

So here’s a shot from that roll processed with negpy, a really nice piece of software focused on taking DSLR-scanned negatives and making nice positives out of them.

And here’s the same RAW file converted using DarkTable. DarkTable has about a billion more features than negpy but it also requires you to know how to use those features, which I largely do not.

I really want something in between these two. I want the pop from the negpy image with the detail from the darktable image. I get that sometimes you have to choose one or the other and that’s ok, but I feel like these are both the extremes and what I want is in between and it seems reasonable that I should be able to get that.

What I really need to do is learn how to use DarkTable, but the documentation is meh and that’s a lot of work, and I’m lazy. So lazy.

Snow Day

The kids are super excited for the snow today. They’re calling for 4-8 inches. These kids have really never had a good snow. They were either too young or not yet born for Snowmaggeddon and we’ve been setting records in the DC area over the last couple years for our lack of snow.

Unfortunately, The Wife and I both have work we have to do, even though OPM closed the federal government. And I have to get a bike ride in for Freezing Saddles.

Also, for the record, it is nearly 9AM and The Wife is still in bed. I’ve already been to the gym, made coffee, done some work, and fed the kids breakfast.

Great moments is passive-aggressiveness


Originally uploaded by thetejon

I know this may seem slightly ridiculous coming from a guy who runs a blog called Complaint Hub, but doesn’t it make you laugh when someone goes to a whole lot of trouble to publicly complain about something they could (and should) just fix themselves?

THIS IS A FLOOR SHARED REFRIGERATOR
Please toss out old food
IT SMELLS!!!

NEED VOLUNTEERS TO CLEAN REFRIGERATOR AND FREEZER
SIGN UP SHEET?

I think it should be a law – if you put out a request for volunteers with a sign-up sheet, your name should be first on the list. The laziness here is really astounding. Well, not really, I’m never really surprised by how lazy people are, but it should be astounding. Not only has the sign-maker not actually done any cleaning, but he or she didn’t even put up a sign-up sheet.