Back in the Wet Film Game

Ductapeman · Aug 11, 2015

Hi, back again after a long hiatus-- back in 2006 a friend of my wife's had retired, then lost his wife (this is in Washington State), so sold off his house and everything in it and moved to Maui-- he had been a pro/semipro for years, so he sold me his Minolta X700 and all the fixin's for peanuts. As things happen the camera bag got buried in the rubble when my little music studio/back bedroom got turned into a storage room, and I just found it back, and am getting the old bug again. There is a body in great shape with the data back, power winder, six or seven lenses from very short to a full-blown light saber (a Vivitar 90-230mm), big bag full of filters, two flashes, etc etc, and I had quite a bit of fun with it back in '06-'07, when I was active here the first time. However, though the image through the viewer is clear, all the developed photos come out with a distinctly yellow tint-- who is left who can clean these old warhorses? Otherwise she runs like a top, and I expect to be shooting this beast for many years to come (or as long as the film holds out). I'm an old guy (63) and am very comfortable working with wet film, but of course I have access to a number of digital imaging setups, though nothing like the quality of the Minolta, and I love watching the faces of the grandkids when I start twisting settings and otherwise performing "magic" ("Any technology sufficiently in advance of your own is indistinguishable from magic"-- Arthur C. Clarke), so you can expect to see me around again from time to time. Sure am glad to see others still using wet film, almost makes me feel like maybe I'm not all that old--

Did I mention that I still have the old Canon S-II that my Dad got on furlough to Japan from the Korean War? Fascinating little piece of machinery, but I have issues trying to use non-DSL rangefinders, and my results have not been very good with it. I can hear Dad up there chuckling at me trying to figure it out . . .

SoulfulRecover · Aug 13, 2015

can you post a picture of the yellow discoloration in the photos?

480sparky · Aug 13, 2015

Stop getting your film wet before putting in the camera.

j/k.

Possibly you're shooting daylight film under incandescent lights without a correction filter? Is your film new?

Ductapeman · Aug 13, 2015

Yes, new Fuji film in a mix of ISO from 100 to 800, indoor and outdoor on the same roll-- I don't have any of the photos handy, will post later in the week when I have them. Nice shot about "wet" film, Sparky, I should have caught that. I have a ton of filters, and am woefully undereducated in their use, but the tint is so even that I have to suspect some element in the camera. Thanks for the feedback, all!

Derrel · Aug 13, 2015

If the photos from both indoor and outdoor scenes are consistently yellowish, I suspect bad quality work on the part of the photofinishing company! In these days of fewer and fewer rolls of film being processed, I think there's a tendency of many smaller labs to scrimp, and to allow substandard chemicals to "run one more batch", and so on. Bad photofinishing has been a problem for literally decades; batches of color prints that are excessively green, or magenta, or whatever...I recall one wedding a local photographer shot, back in the early 1990's--it was HILARIOUSLY AWFUL!!! he called it, "The Smurf Wedding"! The color on the prints was just atrocious! These days, color print photofinishing is not as common as it used to be, and my guess is there's a real lack of skilled operators for hire these days, and a lot more "recent hire" types of people working in what is left of a once-huge industry.