A Developing Idea VII

Thank God for blogging. I mean, usually when a bloke gets a hold of an idea he can run it by his near relatives or perhaps his mates in the pub. They won't really be listening, of course, but that's not the point. But out here, there's no one to blither on to about Russian rangefinders and lumps in my ID-11. Well, I could, I suppose, blither on to the people I work with, but there are only a handful of us still, working together and sharing a wee compound: I really don't want to push my luck.

And so it's to Pig Sty Avenue I turn to think out loud, safe in the knowledge that only the photographic anoraks won't have hit the back button several lines ago.

Tonight I went back to that film developer who I accused of stiffing me recently. I am pleased to say I have to take that back: they'd charged me for prints, too, by mistake, and without me saying anything gave me four dinars change back tonight. Nice.

But my good humour soon evaporated when I went to the shop with the big scanner. It seems to be a father and son outfit, with the son doing the technical stuff and the dad doing the gobshiting. Anyhow, they would seem to have had a chat about cross-processing and decided against it, because the son told the father to tell me, no.

Fuck 'em, I said to myself. I really must get a film scanner. Even if I get colour done in a shop, better to scan it myself and get the higher res for post processing. AND, going for Russian rangefinders as I am, I'm going to have two or three cameras and lenses all for £50 or so, and if I spend say £150 on a film scanner, I'm still getting the whole shebang for less than the cost of a not-bad point and shoot.

So now I've got a Fed 2 and Industar 61 en route, as are yellow and UV 40.5mm filters. I'm bidding on a Zorki 4 with a Jupiter 8. There's a Fed 3 and Industar 61 going as a job lot (£15 buy-it-now) but, whilst tempted, I feel that's going OTT. Just now, anyway.

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