The Art of Chris Froelich

I love misspellings on Ebay.      Olmpus = cheap camera! I was very excited to get an Olympus 35RC rangefinder last week. This is a little gem of a camera that is all metal, doesn't need batteries to work (except for the auto exposure meter, if needed), and a fantastic 42mm f2.8 lens that produces outstanding pictures. When I unpacked it, it was very dirty. In fact the rangefinder spot was dark because the window was full of dirt. I spent a few hours cleaning it up and it looked great, but it seems the aperture is a little sticky. It is two sticky for the auto exposure to work. The 35RC adjusts the auto exposure by opening and closing the diaphragm to match the shutter speed chosen. I brought it to the local camera shop for a internal cleaning and lube, but the wussies wouldn't touch it. Curse you Darkroom. Well, I wanted to make sure that everything else worked, so I went and bought the cheapest C41 film available, Kodak Gold, and ran a 24 exposure roll through the...

Some more analog photography, this time from a Nikon F100 that I've had around the house for a couple of years. I picked this camera up sans lens for less than a C-note and bought a crappy kit lens for $20 bucks at the local camera store. I purchased some nice manual focus lenses after I developed this roll of film and I am awaiting the results.  You know, that is part of the magic (horror) of film - the waiting. Did I just spend $32 on film, processing, and scanning on 36 pictures of my lens cover? You have to wait to find out. Of course that is only if you shoot E-6 or BW film. C-41 film you drop off at Costco, and for $3.99 you have professional results in about an hour. My understanding from the blogosphere is that Costco has the most consistent film developing outside of a professional lab, period This roll was developed at my local camera shop and they did a horrible job. My negatives are scratched I think they underdeveloped the roll. (The null hypothesis is that I u...