As I continue to build skill in developing my own black-and-white film, I need film to develop. So a few Saturdays ago I loaded my circa-1914 Kodak No. 2 Brownie, Model D (review here) with Kodak T-Max 100, and took it along as I ran my weekend errands. I photographed every place I stopped, and a few places I didn’t stop along the way. I finally made the time to develop and scan the film last weekend. As usual, I used Rodinal diluted 1+50, and scanned on my Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II.
I started the day by climbing into my VW. This may well be the most competent automobile I’ve ever owned. Its five-cylinder engine delivers gobs of power, its stiff chassis and tight suspension yield confident handling, its brakes are outstanding, it has plenty of interior room (especially rear-seat legroom), its trunk is enormous, and to my surprise and delight it gets way better gas mileage than the economy car it replaced. It’s not perfect — interior trim bits break easily, the driver’s door easily freezes shut, and I didn’t figure out that the gas door won’t open when the doors are locked until I broke it trying to open it one day. Argh.
My first stop was Costco. It’s hard to hold a box camera level, especially one with viewfinders as tiny as these. This image was probably 20 degrees off level until I fixed it in Photoshop.
Next I drove over to Walmart to do the weekly shopping. I usually shop at a Meijer that’s across the road from my subdivision, but this Walmart is right by the Costco so it was convenient.
I needed to stop by the bank, but on the way I passed this Big Lots. If you’re a student of the history of commercial architecture, you might recognize this as a former Cub Foods. That’s where my family always used to shop before the chain pulled out of Indiana, which is going on 25 years ago now. Big Lots moved in after a few years.
The day grew gloomier and dimmer as I kept on with my errands. The less light there was, the more difficult it was to see anything through the Brownie’s viewfinders. For this photo, I pulled up in my car, rolled down the window, leveled the Brownie on the sill, aimed it as best I could, and flipped the shutter lever.
Walmart didn’t have a couple things my family needed, so on the way home I swung by the Kroger nearest my house. This True Value store is next door to Kroger. I have no idea what caused that light leak or ghosting or whatever it is on the image.
Here’s the Kroger, or some of it, anyway. It used to be a Marsh supermarket until that local chain went out of business. Kroger scooped up this property. By this time, it was nearly impossible to see through the viewfinders. I aimed the camera in the general direction of my subject and hoped it turned out okay.
Finally, I picked up our mail. In our neighborhood all mail is delivered to this central mail station and we all have locked mailboxes here. We forget to pick up the mail for days at a time, and they just cram it all in there. We’re used to crumpled mail now. I never, ever want to live in a neighborhood with a central mail station ever again.
The darker images I got toward the end of my trip speak to the diminishing quality and quantity of available light.
I had pretty good luck developing this roll. I had less trouble than usual getting the film to take up onto the reel. My brother called while I was doing these tasks and I managed to talk to him and do all the processing steps, so I must be building good muscle memory. The results are decent, with the exception of the True Value Hardware shot.
I’m grateful for Photoshop, which let me correct a lot of challenges with these images. Nearly every image needed some level of straightening, and I increased exposure on the last few. I also, of course, had to spot-remove specks from the scans. That’s just a fact of scanner life.
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