Fear and Photos in Las Vegas
Thursday, October 18th, 2007So, last week I was in Las Vegas on business… I’d planned on holding back until I had some really great photos to include with a proper beefy blog entry.
I’ve just got my 12 rolls of film back from Peak, and I’m very upset to discover that every single frame that I took with the F100 I bought second-hand the day before I went away is out of focus. I was using Vlad’s Sigma 24-70 1:2.8 for most shots, but not all… I took a whole bunch with my 50mm 1:1.8 and a few with the 28mm 1:2.8, and these are also OOF.
I had originally planned to shoot a roll, take it to a one-hour processing place and see how they came out. I later didn’t bother, figuring that the chances of the metering not working, were very slim. I guess I was right, the metering was bang on… admittedly the scenes I was shooting were bright but fairly low in contrast.
Instead, it appears that the focal plane is misaligned in some way… serious bummer.
When scanning through 35mm frames all of the photos look great… but tbh, I was really hoping for some good shots this time. I knew I had a few killer ones from the Grand Canyon… the kind that I could put into a photo album for the future. No such luck.
It’s my own fault, I guess. I shouldn’t have been so blase about it all…
The only positive is that all of the F3 shots (another six rolls) appear to be well in focus. I shot at some low shutter speeds for many of them, so a fair few will be lost to camera shake, but overall the exposure and focus look good.
Once I’ve scanned and sorted through, I’ll get some up.
UPDATE on a closer look, it seems that the film back does not have a pressure plate to hold the film flat… serious bummer. I feel stupid for not realising until now, but then again, is it something you’d normally check?