Lessons From A Greensboro Road Trip

 I had the best time with the cameras in Greensboro. With the Lovely and Talented Miss Lisa in classes all day, I was left to my own devices and I took the chance to go to all the places and see all the things. Well, maybe not ALL, but quite a bit. 

Downtown Greensboro Photowalk

My first full day left to myself, I headed to downtown Greensboro for a photo walk. I got there fairly early, maybe 8:30ish, so it was very quiet. The buildings there are a funky mix of turn of the century brick with a little Art Deco thrown in. 

Greensboro’s Flat Iron Building on CineStill 50D

Cool curved wall on this old service station on ProImage 100

I packed my sling camera bag with the Eos-R with one lens, the 35mm f1.8, the Petri 7S and the Holga 120. Everything fit nicely and was pretty easy to get at. I was testing the idea of shooting film and digital on the same trip as well as limiting myself to one lens for the Eos R. It turned out I really enjoyed having three cameras (and my iPhone 12 Pro, which is kind of a bad ass camera itself) at my disposal. 

What surprised me was was how little I reached for the digital camera. I was having so much fun with the film cameras that I rarely pulled it out. When I wanted something that I could send to Lisa or John or share on social media, I used the phone. It’s not that the digital camera isn’t fun any more, it’s more that I just didn’t feel I needed to use it that morning. I found that being free to just use what struck me as the most fun at the time was pretty great.

The Holga and Tri_X make this look like it could have been taken 100 years ago

This just seems to cry out for B&W

I used Kodak ProImage 100 and CineStill 50D, both color films, in the 35mm Petri and one roll of tried and true Kodak Tri-X 400 black and white and one roll of Lomography Color Negative 400 in the Holga. I learned that slow speed (low ISO) films make the Petri more fun to use. I was a little nervous of the CineStill 50D because 50 is a lower ISO than I’d ever tried and I was hoping it would work ok. There was no need to worry, at least not on a sunny day. The CineStill was maybe even a little over exposed sometimes, I guess because I was afraid I wouldn’t give it enough light. I’m still thinking about how much I like that film, I’ll need to try some more and try to expose it correctly and see what I think. The ProImage was terrific. It let me us lower f-stops and slower shutter speeds than the 400 and 200 ISO films I’ve been using. And I like the colors and tone of the film. It’s definitely a keeper.

These colors! Disney, here we come!

These two are ProImage 100. I love these colors as well

Tank Museum

The following day the boy and I headed to Danville, Virginia to see the Tank Museum. I took the same three cameras and lenses. I put a roll of Tri-X 400 in the Holga and I had to fire off some random photos to finish off the CineStill 50D so I could replace it with the Film Photography Project’s Kodak Vision3 500T, a movie film made to shoot indoors under artificial light. I’ll write more about developing that one, it’s tricky, but in the end the results weren’t bad all. It handled the indoor lighting well and the Petri also handled everything just fine. The Tri-X, though, did not do well under that light in the Holga. I think being limited to f11 just wasn’t enough light. Nothing on that roll came out. But that’s how we learn. 

It was REALLY dark in here, but this still came out ok

Not terrible, but not great

Again, not so bad. 

The Grandover

Between adventures out and about, I took walks around the resort with all three camera and a variety of films. This was where I truly found the joy of having all these options. The Eos R gave me truly beautiful images and knowing I could capture something stunning was fun.  I’m still finishing the roll from the resort in the Holga, but finding shots that played to its quirks was a blast. The ProImage 100 images from the Petri were perfect in their own way, and were just what I was after when I shot them. Switching between the three, and deciding when and why, was fun in itself. As I learn more about the cameras and film stocks, this whole adventure gets more fun as more options open up. 

ProImage 100

Canon Eos-R 

Disney Plans

As a practice run for our Disney trip this trip was great. I’ve found I’m perfectly happy with one, good quality, mid-range lens. For Disney we’ll take the Canon 60D and the 50mm, and I think we won’t miss having a zoom or a telephoto. I’ve settled on buying a bunch of ProImage 100 and Lomography 400 for the trip, those two film stocks proved themselves to me. I’m settled on carrying all three into the parks, though I may switch to a regular backpack rather than the sling as the sling kind of gave my back fits after half a day of walking around. I’ll be bringing a pile of film again because I absolutely love starting the morning choosing what to bring from a wide selection. It’s going to be a Magical trip!