Wow... did photography really always work this way in the past?
I found a 35mm waterproof camera lying in a desk drawer. A reusable one, but still undoubtedly cheap. Anyway, the dial indicated that it had eight photos taken out of a 36 exposure film. So I took it with me when some friends were taking me out kayaking on Loch Lomond yesterday.
Once out on the water, I rapidly discovered that there were only eight exposures left and I didn't have a spare film
On the way home, I stopped off at the local Asda (the UK subsidiary of Wal Mart) and put the film in for one-hour develop, print and scan processing. "Sorry," I was told, "the machine has just been switched off; someone's off sick and the photo kiosk will be closing early. Will tomorrow be okay?"
To be fair to the staff they were embarrassed at the failing, so I accepted that and went on my merry way.
Today I went to collect the pictures. They were still short staffed, and the one person who knew how to operate the hoto kiosk was on her break and out of the store. I contacted the manager to complain, but he seemed more to care about the manner in which I was given the message than the basic fact that the store didn't have enough staff trained in kiosk procedures.
Eventually I got the pictures (free, to be fair) and CD (a store-brand CD, no label on the disc itself, in a card folder). The photos are grainy as heck (this from an ISO 200 film), incorrectly exposed, with a "hair in the grate" (probably from the camera - I can see it on the negatives) and some of them mis-aligned (ie a bar at one edge of the photo and part of the next one showing through). I blame that on cheap camera, though it's a shame that the developing machine doesn't automatically check.
Had I been paying for it, this would have been £4.50 for the d&p, £1 for the CD and a further £5 for the film.
I'll try re-processing the pictures in Photoshop in case there's any gold hidden in there. But how did we ever survive this for so many years?
regards,
/alan
PS Disney relevance - the 24 pictures that had been taken before I rediscovered the camera were at Typhoon Lagoon
I found a 35mm waterproof camera lying in a desk drawer. A reusable one, but still undoubtedly cheap. Anyway, the dial indicated that it had eight photos taken out of a 36 exposure film. So I took it with me when some friends were taking me out kayaking on Loch Lomond yesterday.
Once out on the water, I rapidly discovered that there were only eight exposures left and I didn't have a spare film
On the way home, I stopped off at the local Asda (the UK subsidiary of Wal Mart) and put the film in for one-hour develop, print and scan processing. "Sorry," I was told, "the machine has just been switched off; someone's off sick and the photo kiosk will be closing early. Will tomorrow be okay?"
To be fair to the staff they were embarrassed at the failing, so I accepted that and went on my merry way.
Today I went to collect the pictures. They were still short staffed, and the one person who knew how to operate the hoto kiosk was on her break and out of the store. I contacted the manager to complain, but he seemed more to care about the manner in which I was given the message than the basic fact that the store didn't have enough staff trained in kiosk procedures.
Eventually I got the pictures (free, to be fair) and CD (a store-brand CD, no label on the disc itself, in a card folder). The photos are grainy as heck (this from an ISO 200 film), incorrectly exposed, with a "hair in the grate" (probably from the camera - I can see it on the negatives) and some of them mis-aligned (ie a bar at one edge of the photo and part of the next one showing through). I blame that on cheap camera, though it's a shame that the developing machine doesn't automatically check.
Had I been paying for it, this would have been £4.50 for the d&p, £1 for the CD and a further £5 for the film.
I'll try re-processing the pictures in Photoshop in case there's any gold hidden in there. But how did we ever survive this for so many years?
regards,
/alan
PS Disney relevance - the 24 pictures that had been taken before I rediscovered the camera were at Typhoon Lagoon
