Something went wrong.
I loaded my Minolta XE with a roll of Lomography Berlin. I decided to shoot with my Minolta Celtic 135mm f/3.5 lens. I’ve gotten plenty of good results with my XE. I haven’t used my 135mm that often but never had problems with it before. Previously, I shot 1 roll of Berlin with fine results. But for some reason, that combination led to 36 rather disappointing images.
Most of the images were too dark and grainy. I could attribute that to user error, but those problems existed throughout the entire roll on 2 separate outings. I usually don’t make that many mistakes.
Most of the photos look like these:
I was able to salvage 9 photos by making adjustments in Lightroom Classic. I took all these on the 2nd half of my 2nd walk. For some reason, I had better luck with the end of the roll.
Although the following isn’t a great photo, I was pleased by the happenstance of someone wearing a Phillies sweatshirt walking by a small mural of the Phillie Phanatic. I hadn’t realized that at the time so didn’t see the coincidence until I got the film developed.
I plan on checking the Minolta’s XE’s light meter against the one on my phone. It’s possible it was metering incorrectly. If that checks out, I may shoot with it again soon with a film and lens I’m more familiar with and see what those results are like.
One of the things about film photography is you often don’t know something isn’t working until after you get your film developed.
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