NEWS AND OTHER STUFF WE THOUGHT OF “You Still Shoot Slides?!”
YOU COULD SAY I’M A BIT OF A DINOSAUR because I still shoot film. I’ve been shooting slides since 1999, somehow avoiding the whole digital revolution altogether. When my trusty Pentax K-1000 finally seized up about eight years ago, I purchased a Canon EOS Elan 7 body secondhand from a friend. Leaving the manual world behind for motor-drives and auto-focus was quite the step up for me. I even shelled out for a fancy L-glass telephoto. Rounding out my roster is a 28mm wide to go with my 50mm “kit” lens. Fairly basic tools. Oh sure, there have been plenty of times
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where I have been envious of my friends who shoot digital. The instant results, wide latitude of exposures, and endless opportunities to experiment are hard to ignore. Truth be told, I shoot far less today than when I started my “serious” photography. Most of what I photograph today is for my own personal pleasure. The costs of film and processing have gone up, but it’s all worth it when those green boxes of finished slides come back from Kansas every few months or so. I had a trip to Oregon scheduled at the end
Lamenting that fall foliage comes and goes way to fast, but taking consolation in the fact that snow photography is not far away.
of August to set up and staff the White River Productions booth at the National Train Show, held in conjunction with the National Model Railroad Association convention in Portland. I decided to add a few days to the trip and make a full week of it so I could visit family and also make a return visit to the BNSF Railway operations through the Columbia River Gorge. About a week before I was scheduled to
depart, I broke my camera. Like I had done a thousand times before, I loaded a fresh roll and closed the door. Except this time, I managed to break the latch that holds the door shut. I didn’t have a backup system and no one else I knew had comparable equipment to lend me. With my trip to Oregon only a few days away, I was starting to panic. This was actually the second Canon body I
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had owned. The first one had stopped working for one reason or another about three years ago, and I quickly found a “new old stock” replacement on eBay. With the proliferation of digital technology, good analog film bodies can still be found inexpensively. This time I Googled around on my iPad and found a camera shop selling an Elan 7N through a storefront on
Amazon.com. The purchase price included free two-day shipping, so I took the plunge and completed the order that Saturday afternoon. It was delivered to me the following Wednesday. I didn’t have time to test it out other than to check the focus and replace the batteries. I packed up my gear and flew out to Oregon that Saturday. After crashing at my cousin’s house very
late Saturday night, I decided Sunday I would take it easy and get acclimated. That morning I woke up excited to get reacquainted with Portland, since so much had changed since my last visit in 2009. I sat on the edge of my bed and loaded the first roll of film into my “new” camera. I closed the door and chung! snapped the latch off. Try to picture what was going through my mind at that moment. Here I was, 2,800 miles
from home, about to start the first day of my vacation, and before I could even leave the house, I rendered my only camera inoperable. I was dumbstruck at how I managed to break the latch on the previous body after years of routine operation, and yet repeated the same accident on the replacement within hours. Traditional camera shops and film labs
have all but disappeared over the last 15 years except in the largest cities. Fortunately, Portland is one of those cities. A quick Google search showed me several options, none open on Sunday, though. Responding to a panicked text message exchange, Portland native and consulting editor Alexander Craghead suggested I hit up Blue Moon Camera first thing Monday morning. At this point, some of you are shaking
your heads in exasperation and probably wondering why I didn’t take this as a sign to just shut up and go digital already. Oh, believe me, it crossed my mind, too. The local Best Buy was offering entry level Canon EOS Rebel digital bodies for less than $400.00. While I didn’t completely rule it out, we’ll call that “Plan Z” for now. Despite this setback, I decided to salvage
the weekend anyway I could. I slapped on some duct tape to keep the door shut and seal the edges against light leaks, and headed out the door to explore some scenes along the Tri-Met MAX Blue Line light rail. I spent the afternoon at the busy junction in Vancouver, Wash., before joining my cousins for dinner. Originally, I had planned to be trackside somewhere in the Gorge on Monday morning. Instead, I was impatiently waiting on the sidewalk outside of a camera shop in North Portland. At 9:03 a.m. Pacific Time, a dapper gentleman dressed in shirt and tie unlocked the doors and let me into the 35mm mecca that is Blue Moon Camera. I quickly explained my problem. “Oh yeah, that is common on the EOS body. Most important part made from the weakest material possible.” I asked if a repair was possible and the response was affirmative. “Hopefully we can get the parts by the end of the week, and get it back to you about a week after.” A week after? I want to start shooting this afternoon! Plan Z started to look like a candidate for promotion when I glanced over at the cases that held a considerable amount of used equipment. “Do you have any other EOS bodies?” I
asked, not without a hint of desperation in my voice. The clerk dutifully produced three specimens. Two were models that were somewhat updated versions of what I already had that cost nearly the same as a brand new Rebel. The third one looked familiar, but less refined. It was the EOS A2, first introduced in 1992 (when I was a freshman in high school) and sold through 1998 (when I was a junior in college). Visually, it was like comparing an old beige Apple II to a flashy platinum Apple IIe; they both essentially did the same thing, though one had some slightly updated electronics in a more stylish case. Like I said, I’m a bit of a dinosaur. There was some heft felt as I picked up the A2 body. I slapped on one of my lenses
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