Category: Photography

  • Bored photography

    Sometimes I get bored

    Sometimes I get bored and try distracting myself with some lesser-used camera or process. This time, it’s the original Fujifilm X100 with the old Monochrome preset. Processed in Darktable because I’m a masochist.

  • Roll 54 (2025) / Leica MP, HP5

    This one took me a couple weeks to get through. Some restaurants, some beaches, some dogs.

  • Is my photo workflow feasible on Linux?

    I’m trying. I really am.

    I’ve spent a while getting my head around Darktable and digiKam. That’s no small feat, honestly. What weird software. It’s capable, but getting to where I was with Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and sometimes Capture One has been elusive.

    There are manuals, blog posts, and Youtube videos to consume, but, given the nature of Darktable, everyone tells me to do things differently. There are a dozen ways to accomplish every task. Which one’s best? Who knows!?

    Converting film negative scans it what I’m struggling with most. Lightroom has Negative Lab Pro, which is sort of de facto standard at this point. It makes quick work of conversion, adjustments, and metadata handling. Darktable has Negadoctor, which remains a mystery to me. I’ve used it to convert three rolls, and I’m getting the hang of the process, but I still can’t get the look I want from them. Everything’s a tad muddy, no matter how much I futz with the 175 available sliders.

    One thing I’ve learned is that the Framework is slower than the little Beelink with Darktable. That means the Beelink stays as the main desktop. I thought for a second I could use the Framework for both, but not if I’m going to be processing photos with it.

    I’ll give it until the end of October to see if I can forego the Mac entirely.

  • Photo: The neighbor’s house

    The side of my neighbor’s house (2025). Nikon F100. Kodak ColorPlus.

    I was testing my first roll of Kodak ColorPlus film, so while walking the dog I took this snap of the side of my neighbor’s house. It’s supposed to be a throwaway, but I dig it for some reason. The more I look at it, the more I like it.

    I was using the Nikon F100, so I didn’t bother to think I might have set the ISO manually on an earlier roll. Sure enough, it was set at ISO 400. ColorPlus is a 200 speed film. Whoops. I noticed my mistake halfway through the roll, but figured I’d take the opportunity to push color film for my first time. It kind if ruined the “How good is ColorPlus?” experiment, but oh well.

    I scanned it using the Leica SL2 mounted on a Negative Supply rig, then inverted the scans using Negative Lab Pro in Lightroom (Classic).

    As usual, the colors look weird to me. The shadows have a splash of magenta and everything looks just a little off.

    And yet, I love the photo. I love the diagonal monochrome/color separation. I like the placement of the rocks and the tree. I like the air conditioner unit in the center. The single sunlit yellow flower against deep shadow. And I really love the satellite dish.

    It’s fun when the throwaways work out like that.

  • Roll-049 (2025) / Leica MP

    Favorites from a roll of HP5 through the Leica MP / 50mm Summilux-M ASPH.

    This was the first roll scanned using the Negative Supply setup. It worked really well. I’m coming around to the whole scan-using-digital-camera idea.

  • The Mylio Conundrum

    Mylio is an amazing bit of software for managing large, disparate photo libraries. (For some details, check out this review.)

    A private library that’s truly cross-platform and cloud-independent. Mylio is a media library built around your life, not around a cloud, device, or platform. Collect media from everywhere, access it on any device, anytime—even in Airplane Mode.

    Mylio, in theory, solves my photo management problems:

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  • It’s just that I prefer film

    It’s just that I prefer film

    For the past week or so, I’ve been thinking about shelving the whole film photography thing for a while.

    I have many film cameras, but that’s the fun part, not the problem. It’s the supporting cast that wears me down. There’s just too much infrastructure around film photography.

    If you’ll allow me a bit of a ramble.

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