The Kodak Lives! Also, Fluorescent Algae
Danielle in the park, from the old Kodak Six-20
Having patched up the old Kodak’s bellows with gaffer tape, I finally got a roll of film back that wasn’t horrifically marred by light leakage. They went ahead and developed the film and made singles for me, but didn’t do the scans I’d requested from the lab, because the images weren’t exactly top notch, owing to my lack of a light meter at the time.
Since I had to go by Sunny-16, I would find myself, for instance, in a park wondering “Is this two or three stops below full sunlight?” Judging by the underexposed images I got back, apparently the answer was actually “four.” Regardless, though, it was an absolute joy to get back an envelope full of prints with photos on them that you could actually see something distinguishable in. In fact, focus and exposure issues aside, I have to say that I really like the look. The camera has its quirks, with the shutter occasionally malfunctioning and wiping out a third of an image, or the lens occasionally putting nice little spots on the images, but those are just the sorts of things you expect from a camera like that: I think it gives them a little character.
An old fence, shot with an even older camera
On a separate, but related note, last night I stumbled upon some glowing water out at the causeway. Turns out there’s some variety of algae living in it that, when disturbed, glows. This causes the waves that wash up on shore to glow green, and they’ll also light up if you throw things into the water, or disturb it in any other way. As it turns out, even stomping on the ground can make a bunch of them light up.
Farrah paints with algae
So I went with a couple of friends out to see it again tonight, and tried to make some photographs while we were at it. It did prove difficult, because the algae were dim and the moonlight was bright, but I cranked it up to ISO 3200 and opened up to f/2.8, and managed to get a pretty nifty long exposure while my friend, Farrah, drew shapes in the water with a stick. The result is insanely noisy, of course, and Farrah is a blur from the long exposure: combined with the high ISO noise, this makes her look more or less like a charcoal painting, and the whole scene is just…surreal. Altogether, it makes for an image that I’m very fond of.