Two Slightly Disappointing Rolls

I recently had two rolls of film developed which didn’t turn our as well as I hoped.

I shot the first roll with my Minolta XE which is usually quite reliable. I used Rollei Superpan 200. I’ve had a lot of success with other Rollei film so I was optimistic that the combination of my favorite camera along with the Rollei film would work well.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m blaming either the camera or the film. I still have a lot to learn about photography so there certainly was some user error involved. One of the reasons I’m on a self-imposed moratorium (more or less) on buying new cameras is so I can spend more time learning the ones I already have. I’ve also been thinking I need to experiment less with different films until I get more comfortable with certain ones.

To be fair, there were many pictures that turned out OK, especially ones taken in bright sun. But even with these, the shadows easily got very dark and several are rather soft compared to the sharpness of the ones in bright sun.

The rest of the roll suffers from the dark shadows and unexpected softness.

I probably need to make more of an effort researching film before I shoot with it so I have a better idea of what to expect.

The second disappointing roll wasn’t as problematic as this roll but still didn’t meet my expectations.

My Olympus OM-1 came with a 28mm lens. At one point, I bought a 135mm lens and a 28-80mm lens. Although that covers a fairly significant range of focal lengths, I prefer shooting with prime lenses which left quite a gap. I recently bought a Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 lens to fill that gap. I went out once before with it but that was on a cloudy day, and I was shooting with Lomography Color Negative 400 which presents somewhat muted colors so I wanted to try again with a different film.

I tried it with a roll of reliable Fujicolor Superia X-Tra 400. The results are fine, but I was hoping for something better given that combination. Since that was only the second roll I shot with that lens, I won’t be too harsh in my judgement, but I certainly was expecting better results.

Of course, one of the many joys of photography is that it often is challenging which can compel you to go back out and try again.