With one successful photo shoot under my belt, I figured the rest should be a breeze and planned to put some time aside for research. However, since photo opportunities arose much faster than I could browse and read, research was put on hold and thus my second roll of film was dubbed “Test #2”.
I brought the camera with me to the coast over the course of two consecutive weekends. While there, my plan of attack was very similar to the previous one: point, try to get the guides to align, and shoot.
The first weekend, I spent the day in one of my favorite places, Half Moon Bay. After taking pictures of pumpkins, miscellaneous antiques, and the marina, I drove North to Pacifica and waited for the sunset. The weather was perfect, and since I was focusing on stationary items I didn’t have any trouble aligning the guides for these shots.
The following weekend, I took a trip to Sutro Baths, where I decided to switch it up. For those who don’t know, Sutro Baths was an amazing 3-acre, indoor, public swimming pool, which opened in 1894 and burned down in 1966. Its ruins rest at the base of San Francisco’s cliffs and are a popular tourist attraction. I had never been there before and was excited to take some artsy fartsy pictures.
At this point, the only dial I semi-understood was the shutter speed dial, so I tried taking pictures at different extremes: 1000 (my camera’s fastest shutter speed) VS. 4 (one of its slowest).
Though it seemed logical that a fast shutter speed would be the best way to capture the crashing waves, I was determined to test slow speeds too. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that the misty fog and super bright glare was making shooting really tough. Keep in mind, since I still didn’t understand the relationship between shutter speed and aperture, I didn’t do much adjusting.
Once I was done exploring the ruins and admiring the view of the Golden Gate Bridge, I traveled South along Highway 1 and stopped at Moss Beach for dinner — just in time to watch the sun go down.
The following day, I took pictures around the house until the frame counter reached 36. The advance lever kept wanting to move forward, but since the counter was maxed out I figured the film was done. Anxious to get the roll to the camera store before closing time, I popped the film rewind knob open and started winding away.
Amateur mistake!
When I started winding the knob, I heard a ripping sound and I felt the blood rush out of my face. I stood there, frozen, trying to think back to the first day at the camera store. I remember being told that there would be some resistance, but was that suppose to happen now or later? Despite this being my second roll of film, I was completely lost because I didn’t remove the first roll from the camera; the photo technician did.
At this point, the only frame of reference I had regarding torn or tangled film tape was in audio cassettes and VHS tapes. From what I can remember, those always needed to be detangled before getting wound. It didn’t seem logical to keep winding since I had no idea what was going on inside…
So I opened the camera door.
The good news is that I was able to see that some of the little square holes in the film had been torn, which didn’t look as bad as it sounded.
The bad news is that I completely exposed the film to light.
Feeling defeated, I bolted into the camera store and told the technician what I had done. She told me that I — queue #facepalm — forgot to press the button on the bottom of the camera to release the film.
In the end, only 18 of the 36 were developed, I lost all the pictures from weekend #1, and most of the photos from weekend #2.
Did you notice that I said, “only 18 of the 36 were developed”? The roll of film only has 24 frames, right?
Well… I’ll explain this little fiasco in my upcoming post, so stay tuned!
View all the photos from this roll of film on my Flickr!