Blackjack!

I’m gonna say twenty one crows this morning.

A few waiting for us out front, calling out to the rest.

Plus, a gull and, surprisingly, three hummingbirds.

I discovered very, very late in the game that my phone camera, because I was shooting in the dark last night, was in Night mode.

Still, the camera managed to work around that.

Most of the time.

This one’s mooning me!

The camera did not recover from Night mode in this one…

It was cold, and there was some ice, but the one picture I took of the frost did not come out.

So here are some flowers.

And Doggo, fart (?) bombing this picture

And it isn’t a morning walk without a thieving bastard making an appearance.

Brazen bastard. Yes, he got this close.

And at the end, at last, the morning coffee ritual.

No gonna lie. Drinking from this Yeti mug feels different. And I don’t like it. Maybe because the handle is squared instead of rounded?

 

Kodak Kodacolor 200 – Walk-About Part 2: Not so yellow as we were led to believe. So much the better!

More neighborhood flora photos from my first roll of Kodacolor 200, all shot on my Pentax K-1000 with 100mm macro lens.

The walk continues, now with some flowers that are distinctly less yellow. Will they feel as flat as the photos in yesterday’s post, which were predominately yellow?

This flower was vibrantly red in real live, so this near oversaturation isn’t an exaggeration. f5.6, 1/250 sec.

At the end of the last post, I postulated that the images there underwhelmed me not because I’m a sub-par photographer but because maybe, just maybe, Kodacolor 200 has problems with yellow. Well, this photo does not feel flat to me. A tad overexposed, yes, but not wishy-washy flat.

So far, one point Photographer, zero points Kodacolor 200 when it comes to yellow.

Pink and orange flowers with good color reproduction, though maybe a bit overexposed. f5.6, 1/250 sec.

Colors are vibrant, contrast is definitely present. We also get decent detail in the shadows. This photo is not flat, and the Photographer now has two points.

Suck it, Kodacolor 200!

Bright colors again, with detail in the shadows. f8, 1/125 sec.

I like this photo. I was focused on the shadow of the stamen on the petal when framing it, but also drawn by the red at the heart of the flower fading to a yellow-orange. No details are washed out, but I do think the meter misled me here (and in the previous images), resulting in slight overexposure. But it absolutely pops.

The day before, I saw a flower like this one fully in bloom. On this day, however, they had all started to curl. f5.6, 1/125 sec.

Believe it or not, this flower was in shade when I took this photo. It is definitely overexposed, to the point that the flower, instead of attracting the eye, feels like a distraction, like the white background of the photographic paper has ripped through the image. This isn’t entirely Kodacolor 200’s fault, though it does suggest that there is less latitude in the highlights, which is a bummer. If the film was more forgiving of overexposure, this photo could have been OK.

At this point, I think I prefer Kodacolor 100 over 200. I had really high hopes when I went on this photo shoot based on the Kodacolor 100 results I’d gotten, but the results haven’t lived up to my expectations.

It’s possible deliberately underexposing slightly would help this emulsion, and my eye for composition might be handicapping it, but overall I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed so far.

Coming up: some more flora and fauna. And if those are insufficient to sell you (and me) on Kodacolor 200, I might have another use case for this film. I just haven’t decided if I like the photos that exhibit that case enough to post them.