On scanning photos...

I'm currently scanning my 3rd film out of 12 that I've taken over the past 2 weeks (yeay!) and I wanted to quickly write about how I'm finding scanning the films myself rather than getting them scanned elsewhere.

(Camera: Canon EOS 750  Film: Kodak BW400CN  Location: Hardcastle Craggs, Hebden Bridge)

It's been a joy and I am loving it.

I just shared a post last Friday about using the scanner but I actually wrote that about 3 weeks ago and since then I've had time to think about my photo process (in between all the other exciting things going on ha) and all of a sudden I feel in a much more relaxed place compared to the last few months of taking photos before having my scanner.

I thought that I would be impatient to see my photos and annoyed that I'd have to wait for each roll to scan - that I would hate the prolonged process and just want to have the results already. But then I started scanning and the excitement wasn't in getting a whole CD of photos that I quickly rushed through. The excitement was having the time with each individual photo and getting to look at them all as single items rather than part of a collection of photos and that has been SO exciting! Some photos aren't quite in focus (grr Rhianne) and some aren't the best photos I've taken but having that small amount of time to look at the photo, remember where I was and how I felt when I took it has almost been meditative for me.

I'm still quite surprised that I feel this way as I am usually so impatient about things - but adding another step to the photo process has only made the journey feel more like its mine rather than detract from it in any way and I'm so relieved about that. I can't wait to see what the next 9 rolls of film bring me and I definitely can't wait to share more photos!

p.s. A sneak peak of the photos coming up with the image above - scanned by myself, woop!

I bought a film scanner (finally)

So as well as turning 30 and getting married, September was also the month that I finally bought my own film scanner - a busy month huh. I've mentioned before that I usually use a shop in Leeds called Max Speilmann to develop and scan my photos and usually the quality of the scans (combined with how cheap they are) is enough for what I need to share photos on here and occasionally print them.

Until one film.

I've been trying to find more black and white films since the demise of Kodaks BW400CN film (still so sad, I should have stocked up) and as part of my searching I found that a local camera shop in Leeds - West Yorkshire Cameras - sold their own C41 B&W film - how awesome and perfect is that? So obviously I bought one to try and I ran it through a camera as fast as I could. And it was all going great until I picked up the film from Max Spielman and saw the results - they were so grainy - as you can see in the photo below (ignore the light streak, we're pretty convinced that was user error ha).

At first I thought it was me, so I popped to the West Yorkshire Camera shop to ask them if they'd seen results like it before and the man working there was great - he looked at the negatives for me and figured out that basically Max Speilmann's scanners couldn't cope with the negative.... so I bought a new scanner that could scan films that evening - like you do. A Epson Perfection V370. I could have bought a more expensive one, but I wasn't sure if that was what I wanted to do and actually this one has been great and done exactly what I needed it to do. Phew! 

The photo above is the scan from my scanner - as you can see the grain is much much better and the photo seems much softer with a more balanced contrast (though could it be lighter? perhaps?). I'm still not particularly great at scanning - now that I've started it I'm thinking that perhaps I've opened a whole can of worms with scanning details haha. Especially if I decide to scan ALL my photos - I've taken 50 films in my LC-A alone, so I can't imagine how many films I do actually have to rescan now in total. At this moment I've scanned 5. Though those 5 are swaying me to scan them all as even with my limited scanning experience so far they look so much better quality and grain that the ones I originally have.

If any one has any tips about film scanning (that won't fry my brain) I'd love to hear them!