Photography

My daughter has been sending me adorable AI-generated images of her and my grandson in various Christmas get-ups. They’re so fun and cute and she’s having a blast. It makes me wonder, though, what happens 20 years from now when she’s scrolling back through her photos and sees these. Will she remember that they’re faked? How will she know what’s real and what’s not? How will my grandson? I worry that it won’t matter to her or anyone else that their pasts are imaginary. Well, it matters to me and it makes me sad.

I was bored this afternoon so I just walked around the house and used up a roll of HP5 in the Rolleiflex.

On macOS, I prefer Capture One as my RAW editor, but C1’s cataloging features are weak. Plus, I’d prefer not having my catalog and editor so tightly tied together. I’d love to get out of the Adobe ecosystem, so I don’t want to get too deep into using Lightroom Classic for my catalog. Photo Mechanic is great, but has gotten too expensive. I thought I’d revisit NeoFinder. I’m glad I did. NeoFinder is really good at keeping track of all kinds of media on all kinds of storage. I’ve put 2025’s photos and some other projects into it as a test, and it’s impressive. Also, the app just turned 30 years old, so, Lindy Effect. ...

I’m becoming a fan of this awkward kit. The F100 is such a sleeper and can be had relatively cheaply. I ended up with that weird-looking SB-20 flash as part of a local Facebook purchase. There might be something to this TTL flash, auto-focus, auto-exposure photography thing.

It’s nice having a pocketable point-and-shoot film camera with me. Normally for me, this either means an Olympus Stylus Epic or Ricoh GR1. Both of these are having issues, so I impulse ordered a Canon Sure Shot AF-7 from eBay. It was $30 shipped, so there wasn’t much risk. Here’s a self-portrait using the self-timer from the first roll (Kentmere 400) through the new camera: Self-portrait at my desk ...

I’m trying. I really am. I’ve spent a while getting my head around Darktable and digiKam. That’s no small feat, honestly. What weird software. It’s capable, but getting to where I was with Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and sometimes Capture One has been elusive. There are manuals, blog posts, and Youtube videos to consume, but, given the nature of Darktable, everyone tells me to do things differently. There are a dozen ways to accomplish every task. Which one’s best? Who knows!? ...

Sometimes I think I should quit shooting film. But I never do.

I’ve tried to make Mylio work a few times. Maybe this time it will.

The Ricoh GR1 looked sad in the “broken camera” drawer, so I loaded it up with a roll of HP5 and gave it a shot. It worked just fine. This time. Sometimes the LCD stops working. Sometimes the viewfinder gets blocked by something loose inside the camera. Usually it’s both those things, but this time I got through the roll without issue. It’s a great camera when it works. ...

I enjoy using the Rolleiflex so much that I am able to ignore how difficult it can be to focus and how sometimes it flares badly. Alice Mirror self-portrait More Alice

The Stylus Epic, HP5, and light leaks at the beach

Captured in the act

I’ve rejiggered the Ghost blog I was using for this site into a dedicated photography blog. There’s a lot of cruft scattered about, and I’m using the default theme for now, but it’s a start. The idea is that it will help me focus on photography, which is something I want to do, but haven’t been doing. Sometimes I need a nudge, so baty.photo is a nudge. See Why do I need a separate site for photography? for a bit more detail. ...

What if I used Glass for my film roll posts, instead?

I like to have Make and Model information available in film scans, and use exiftool for this. I have a lisp function in Emacs that does this, but sometimes I’d like to do it from a terminal instead. So I asked Claude for help. The result was camera-exif-tui. It’s a tiny Go app that launches a TUI that allows me to select a make/model and a folder full of image files. It calls exiftool and updates the images with the selected camera info. ...

It’s been great having the MP back from DAG. Sometimes I feel like it’s too much camera ($$$-wise), but then I use it and realize it’s the exactly right amount of camera. Papa showing Lincoln how it works Lincoln showing papa how it works

Alice posing

Putting the new Rolleiflex through its paces by subjecting it to some self-portraits of me

Took a walk with the new Rolleiflex this afternoon

I maintain a list of shell commands for updating Make/Model/Lens information in film scans. I’ve always run this via babel in a code block in an Org mode file. Something like this: #+begin_src sh cd ~/Pictures/_Scans exiftool '-m' '-Make=Leica' '-Model=Leica MP' -overwrite_original . exiftool '-m' '-LensModel=Summilux-M 1:1.4/50 ASPH' '-FocalLength=50mm' -overwrite_original . #+End_src Easy enough, I just copy and paste from a list of commands, depending on the lens and camera. However, it occurred to me that I’d prefer to simply have Emacs prompt me for the information, and then take care of the shell commands for me. Also, instead of hard-coding the path, I wanted to use marked files in a Dired buffer. ...