Lomography 800

In a previous post I commented that this roll had a bit of a story behind it. This roll was shot on my second trip since starting to shoot film. I had planned to go from Austin out to Mammoth Caves National Park out in Kentucky and take some pictures there and elsewhere on the trip.

One thing about travelling for me is that like back in April when I went out to Palo Duro Canyon, I tend to be a solo traveller and am generally going to travel by driving when travelling domestically. This mainly comes down to it being a slower method of travel. While you can cover large distances by driving, it’s significantly slower than flying. This allows me to go and stop more places and see more things. An even slower method of travel, like cycling or walking, would be interesting and preferable environmentally but isn’t doable in any reasonable amount of time so those methods are restricted to closer distances.

All that to say that my first stop on this trip was Little Rock, Arkansas. One thing to note is that none of these pictures were taken there, at least not completely. I mentioned in the previous post the escalator that’s superimposed onto the piece at the St. Louis Art Museum. That picture I can only assume is one I took in Little Rock. Originally, I was going to take pictures with my normal camera, the Minolta X-370, while at the Bill Clinton Presidential Library. Unfortunately, shortly into starting this roll I realized that there was an issue with the camera and decided to back out the roll I had started. The only remaining visage of those pictures being that escalator in that one picture that for who knows why ended up there.

So, you might ask, how were these pictures taken? Did I have a backup camera? Yes, but not one that could take this roll of film. I had also taken an instant camera, like a Polaroid (but technically a Fuji Instax), which takes an entirely different type of film. Instead, I spent a large chunk of my time in Nashville looking for a new camera.

Which is to say, all of these pictures were taken on a Canon EOS Rebel 2000 that I found and got in Nashville with some help from some thrift store employees that pointed me in the right direction. In addition to the camera body, I got a 28-80mm zoom lens to work with and another lens for my Nikon that I’m sure I’ll talk about in a much later post.

Ultimately, I didn’t really like shooting on this camera and probably won’t shoot on it again, but it’s an important piece of context and a story that I needed to write down. As to why I didn’t like shooting on it, it’s one of those in between cameras between film and digital. It has a lot of modern features. Autofocus, albeit slow and not great. Adjustable metering, which I’ll admit is nice. Aperture/Shutter priority modes, which I don’t use as I like the control of manual. Honestly, it’s a pretty capable camera. But I didn’t really like the lens, which due to its poor manual focusing, meant that I felt forced to use the slow and awkward auto focus. With a different lens, perhaps I would’ve felt better about the camera. But also, the camera with its automatic exposure advancing and loading, felt further from the picture taking experience I had started to get accustomed to.

Honestly, these pictures are fine. Like most of the rolls just before this one, it feels more like a tester roll than an expressive one and that’s a bit disappointing. This isn’t really a post about this roll so much as a post about the circumstances behind it and that’s totally ok.

I don’t really have a whole lot else to say about this roll. One thing I will say is that I did find another Minolta X-370 while travelling and picked it up. It had a couple issues that needed to be fixed but I’m happy to report that they were and a couple upcoming rolls were shot on it. The next post is all instant photography so look forward to that one.