Minding Minolta
“Only from the mind…of Minolta”
Anyone remember that old Minolta advertising slogan from the ’80s? That’s one of those that sticks in my head like Where’s The Beef? and Grab A Heiny!
Last Summer and Fall, my father-in-law wanted to sell his Minolta Maxxum 7000 with a 50 mm f/1.7 lens on eBay. I said before he did, let me load some Kodak B&W film (400 ISO, I think. Standard variety, not any Tri-X or anything) I had and give it a run.
I probably should have read the manual that came with it for better results. I never really grasped the electronic button system of increasing or decreasing the ISO and F stop. The autofocus worked well, and I really just loved the DOF that I got with that f/1.7. That image that opens this post is a good example. As is this one, shot in TriBeCa, New York City last fall.
Another one from that same day, an evening portrait of my buddy George over an IPA of some sort. He’s looking abit rakish here, like a young Liam Neeson perhaps.
I certainly shoot less with a film camera than with my digital. My father-in-law kept asking me if I got the pictures back yet. I kept saying I didn’t even finish the 24 roll film yet. He asked me so many times, I finally just burned some images to get done with it. Then I gave it to him to get developed to expedite the process. He took it to Walgreens, I think.
Speaking of greens, many of the images came back with a greenish tint. Since we had them burned to a disk, I opened the JPG’s in Photoshop and desaturated them back to true B&W. Here’s a shot of Olivia I didn’t touch.
The green tint isn’t bad, really. While I’d like to assume that Walgreen just didn’t adjust their print monitor correctly, I don’t know why some are greenish, some are B&W. Oh well.
And As you can see, every shot had a good amount of grain to it. Like Joe McNally said once said in a blog post “…grain you can drive a truck through.” I’m not complaining. Grain is good, I think. I can give an image some soul. And if you can combine grain with a foggy night a the Jersey Shore…
As I said earlier, the one thing I notice shooting film (remember, I pulled out an old Konica for our family vacation in Vermont last summer)…I don’t shoot as much. I don’t know if I’m just indiscriminate with digital, or it’s just that when I shoot digital, I know that’s just the first step and I can get what want in the second step, the digital darkroom. I have a harder time “seeing” the result with film. That’s why it took me so long to go through the 24 exposure roll of film. I know how we always hear about “slow down…shoot with film…” but I think I slow down to much.
Still, it’s fun to see what these cameras can do, and what the film can do. I think I’m out of all my old leftover rolls, so if I want to keep doing this with my old cameras, I’ll have to order some more.
The photographic education continues….
© Mark V. Krajnak | JerseyStyle Photography | All Rights Reserved 2015
JerseyStyle Photography 
Roll film… haven’t done that in a while. Of course, I haven’t printed anything in a while, either. Must be a connection. And better trademark ‘Grain is Good’ before someone else does 😉
Film does have a learning curve. Having shot with film you can more fully appreciate how good the film shooters were to get their impressive images. I started with film over 33 years ago.
The color issues on the prints may have been due to the film processing or the printing. While you did not identify the actual type of film, do you recall the film’s developing process? If it was C-41, the film was processed in color chemistry and printed on color paper. Both developing and printing can introduce a color cast. Several years ago I had a color cast show up when I used Ilford XP1 for some images and had is processed at the local 1 hour shop.
David, like I said, my father-in-law dropped the film off at a local Walgreens, not a lab per se. No idea what their process is. It’s all good in the hood. I’m not making huge prints or anything. Since I have the JPGs on disk, I can make whatever corrections I want.