Tuesday 8 February 2022

Negative Anomaly

Clare went off to her study group after breakfast and I worked on some ideas for a series of Passiontide meditations on Jesus' last journey to Jerusalem prior to the events celebrated in the celebration of the Holy Week Triduum. Then I collected Clare's prescription and did some shopping, with a trip to R J Berry the butcher, to thank him for our exceptional Christmas turkey. I came away with some super sausages and chicken thighs for the freezer, two of which I cooked for lunch as I didn't fancy chickpeas today.

Afterwards, I sat down to do my daily Duo Lingo Spanish drill and then slept for over an hour, before my walk around the park. I had a Holy Week planning email to respond to before supper. We watched the days spectacular Winter Olympics reports on BBC catch-up, plus a classic edition of 'Yes Prime Minister'. Then I tidied up family holiday photos scanned yesterday from the late eighties and uploaded them to share. It's been good to rediscover them and savour them after so many years.

One small technical thing I observed scanning negatives yesterday was the minute difference in the size of negatives produced from the two latest packs of film, such that scanning produced a consistent black edge on two sides of the frame. The images are a few millimetres smaller than in other later film rolls scanned. Given these rolls of film date from 1985 and 1986, and all other scans are from later rolls, it  conclude this was when I switched cameras. 

My trusty old SLR Praktica with Zeiss lenses produced fine images, but the shutter became less reliable after my Jamaica visit in 1982. I acquired an Olympus Trip pocket camera, which had simple autofocus and exposure regulation. It was more convenient to use, even if the quality of the images wasn't quite as good as the Praktica. The Olympus images on film occupy the full 35mm frame, whereas the Practica images fit just inside the frame, producing that dark edge. At least, that's the only explanation I can find for this curious anomaly.

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