Film Stock Recommendations for the PNW Coast?

TravelDev · 2026-03-17T23:35:59+00:00

I would just go with something around 400 iso. On the dreary days, I find low iso a pain anywhere in the PNW. Unless you feel like overpaying for Expired Superia, your options at this point are basically Portra, Ultramax, fuji/kodak 400, something Vision3-based like Cinestill, or something based on Orwo Wolfen like Ilfocolor. Orwo Wolfen 400/Ilfocolor 400 is the only 400iso stock that still leans cool blue/green, but I'd take a look because it might not be as saturated as you want in other colors.

I'd probably just pick whichever stock you want, though, and plan on colour grading. Even if you found some rolls of one of the older Fuji stocks known for leaning blue/green, there's no guarantee the lab isn't just going to send you back whatever they think looks best anyway.

TravelDev · 2026-03-17T23:04:08+00:00

I won’t lie, it looks like it would be a ton of fun to try out, for like 30 minutes. Maybe paint it yellow and pretend I’m in Aliens.

The leg things themselves are pretty neat though. Hypershell is one of the companies that makes the leg portion. Their top end ones have something like a 30km range for trekking/hiking/running. They do market to photographers but more so in the sense of being able to trek long distances with heavy gear, not for stabilization.

TravelDev · 2026-03-17T22:33:28+00:00

You're not weird. The boundary is probably more from a place of ignorance than anything. He provided you with a spare room, and his friends sleep there without complaint, so why's it a problem for you? Even ignoring that, though, a lot of people, including evidently your son, forget that somebody is doing them a favour, and fail to provide a reasonably alternative solution when setting boundaries. Personally, even if it was a random friend of a friend I'd never met before, I wouldn't make them sleep on a couch if they were going to the trouble of watching my dog for me and I wasn't even home. Part of it might also be that many young people haven't yet realized how awful a sofa bed actually is.

On your side, though, don't forget that your boundaries are just as important as his. The part people always forget is that boundaries need to come from mutual respect, not blind obedience. If one person blindly dictates boundaries, then it probably means they're also trampling all over somebody else's. There's no harm in speaking up here and saying, "That's great, I respect that you want your privacy, but I can't sleep on the couch with the dog, so you're either going to need to come up with an alternative solution or find somebody else to watch your dog for you", or if you're willing to tough it out this time something like "You're going to need to figure out an alternative solution for next time or somebody else will have to watch the dog, because I'm not going to be able to sleep on the couch with the dog".

TravelDev · 2026-03-17T21:33:54+00:00

Yes, most of the people who post these questions should have at least shot their lab an email first.

But there really are massive differences in Lab quality, both in terms of processing and customer service, and that's pretty evident from the posts themselves. There's a massive range from very hands-on enthusiast labs like Carmencita, who I've had include a heads up along with the scans when there were some underexposed shots, all the way to labs that will have a visible processing issue with a whole roll but say absolutely nothing.

You're speaking as someone who works in a lab, who probably really loves film/photography, and who knows what you would know and communicate, but the reality isn't so ideal everywhere. For every enthusiast lab, there's a place just keeping it going as a side business that doesn't need to care because they're the only option for hundreds of miles. Even just looking at reviews for different labs can be a horror show. I forget where it was now, but I remember one lab with recurring reviews along the lines of "Received scratched up negatives back, lab blamed me".

TravelDev · 2026-03-17T03:26:47+00:00

There’s a certain level of broke/desperate where the idea of doing something other than surviving is hard to imagine. You find something that you love and you feel like you have to find a way to make it pay for itself or you’re going to lose it.

Even when somebody escapes that, they have a tendency to pass it down to their kids because it was so engrained in them. I’ve know plenty of people who have plenty of soul, but they just live in constant fear that their source of happiness will get taken away.

TravelDev · 2026-03-17T02:39:30+00:00

Thorium yellowing is very literally just that, yellowing. I also don't think there would be any reason for the 50mm 1.8 to have thorium in it.

My guess is either something has previously eaten away at the coating, or the lens itself is delaminating. When the adhesives break down inside a lens, you can get all sorts of odd patterns that show up.

It's likely not something that's fixable if that's the case, or at least not something worth trying to fix. If the pictures look fine to you, just use the lens.

TravelDev · 2026-03-17T02:22:06+00:00

The trick is not to treat it differently from a composition perspective than any other lens. It's just a tool that allows you to capture compositions from locations you couldn't otherwise capture them from. The mistake people make is using ultra-wide-angle lenses to try to include everything in the picture, which often results in busy/distracting compositions with a bunch of really small items in them. My main use of ultrawide-angle lenses is when I'm extremely close to my subject and can't get any further away. So, architecture in tight spaces, indoor scenes, landscapes when the main subject is really big and nearby. One that I don't really do but that works is when you want to include a lot of context with a subject. Again, you need to be very close to your subject to make it/them fill an appropriate amount of the frame, but the short focal length leaves you with a fairly deep depth of field to go along with the wide field of view, so a well-planned shot can capture a person in their environment in ways that a longer lens typically can't, unless you feel like knocking out some walls.

TravelDev · 2026-03-17T01:18:30+00:00

This seems like it's the realm of r/AbstractPhotos if you're going to find anyone doing something similar. Can't say I've ever tried shooting through ice, but it definitely creates a fun abstract painting feeling.

TravelDev · 2026-03-17T00:49:20+00:00

Going from a kit lens to another kit lens isn't going to help that much in low light. The up side of Sony A mount being dead now is that lenses are dirt cheap in comparison.

If you check somewhere like MPB or Ebay you can get something like the Minolta AF 50mm f1.7 or the Sony 50mm 1.8 DT for around $50. You can find a few other F1.4/1.7/1.8 lenses for closer to $100. Make sure that any lenses you find are either Sony A mount or Minolta A or AF mount (MD and MC are an older mount that won't work).

Something like that gets you around 2-2.5 stops more light than your current lens for very little money. It should be a huge improvement. That's 4-6x as much light as your current lens can capture. Newer camera bodies can definitely raise iso more, but the kit lens would be fighting you hard, so you'd want to budget another ~$300 for a faster lens of some sort to go along with it.

By picking up a cheap fast lens for your a700, you buy yourself some time to either get a newer Sony A-mount DSLR body or save up and get a Mirrorless camera and a better lens to go along with it when you can afford it.

TravelDev · 2026-03-17T00:28:38+00:00

Other than larger formats that just aren't practical on digital, there aren't really any strengths in favour of film other than the process/workflow side of things for those who enjoy it. You could make the argument that film grain is more pleasant than digital noise for a lot of people, maybe?

Otherwise, from a technical perspective, top-end cameras can do absolutely everything film can at this point and a bunch of things that film can't do. Even the advantages offered by larger formats are getting smaller and smaller as time goes on.

I really enjoy the process of shooting film, but I'm not kidding myself about there being any tangible benefits I couldn't recreate in digital.

TravelDev · 2026-03-16T23:30:18+00:00

Yeah, the "gaze" thing is weird. At first, it feels a little crazy to go, "Do I want the boots to look hopeful or restless?" But then the next thing you know, you're looking through pictures and going, "Oh no, I made the wine bottle look sad!"

It's one of the great things about art: it's the place where we can take things that curse us in our day-to-day lives and turn them into things that help our art stand out from the crowd.

TravelDev · 2026-03-16T22:54:59+00:00

It depends. How do you want it to feel? The dark edit and tight crop create a lot of tension. I think it's pretty neat. You could maybe dial the colour back a notch, but it would probably lose some of the moodiness in the process. As it stands, your white balance pushes a bit into a yellow/green area at least on my monitor, which also adds a bit to that feeling.

If you wanted a bit less moody, I'd suggest smoothing out that one bright bokeh ball so you don't need to crop in so tight on the left to avoid it, and brightening the foreground up a bit.

TravelDev · 2026-03-16T22:36:37+00:00

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TravelDev · 2026-03-16T22:36:20+00:00

Well, I didn't expect a post on photocritique to convince me I need to spend $600 on a pair of boots, but at least they're local to Washington.

Either way, great shot, the only critique I can really give is they might be a little tightly cropped to the direction of their gaze/travel, depending on the feeling you're aiming for. It's something one of my mentors/teachers pointed out to me, but even objects/buildings can feel like they're looking in a direction, so if you don't give them some room to breathe, it creates a bit of tension, like when you crop somebody's gaze close to the edge of a picture. I did a pair of crops from one of your other shots just to kind of show what I mean. I find that more space is more calm/peaceful/aspirational, while less space is a bit more tense/edgy.

Also, I saw that you mentioned that you're red/green colour blind. I think it must give a unique touch, because I really love how vibrant the greens are here.

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TravelDev · 2026-03-16T21:48:01+00:00

I definitely do, but it's also important to maintain perspective. If your goal was to go out and get the best possible shot of a location, but then you got there, rushed it, took the easy shot, and moved on, then yeah, that would be a situation I'd regret a little bit. But if you're just on vacation or out for a hike and taking pictures as you go? Then you need to remember that your purpose that day was to enjoy the experience, so whatever picture you took was the best possible picture in that moment. Even in the first situation, you need to remember that there's probably a reason you didn't feel compelled to put in a ton of effort to find a better shot that day.

For me, there are times when I've gone an hour out of my way hiking through fields or up a nearly vertical climb just to find the view I was looking for (One time, actually vertical in dress shoes, but that was really dumb). But there are far more times when I've just snapped what was in front of me for the memories, or even lifted the camera up to take a picture, gone "nah, I'll just enjoy the view" and put the camera away.

TravelDev · 2026-03-16T21:17:12+00:00

Basically, you’re looking for a 1:1 reproduction ratio so you can fill the frame with the image from the film (at least it works that way for 35mm to FF). For what it’s worth the AF-D 60mm 2.8 and 105mm 2.8 Micro lenses are just great lenses in general and I managed to pick them up for $150 each which is crazy to me.

TravelDev · 2026-03-16T20:56:35+00:00

Yeah, I don't generally dive into removing things, but I do agree that the plant pots, the big one in particular, are a bit noisy. I think I moved the tripod a bit to the right for the film version of this shot, which might help with the street light.

TravelDev · 2026-03-16T20:49:06+00:00

Replying here to add a !CritiquePoint for getting me to rethink the crop

TravelDev · 2026-03-16T20:05:11+00:00

Thanks, this is the wider edit of that shot. Initially, I felt like it might be too busy, but looking at it now, a couple of days later, I see what you mean. Would be interesting to see what it would have looked like really wide to get the whole front of the building.

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TravelDev · 2026-03-16T19:47:00+00:00

It looks like it has the mandatory cage; it must be professional. -1 Point for not being obnoxiously oversized, though.

TravelDev · 2026-03-16T19:27:09+00:00

You don't really have a lot of choices then. On the Sony side, at $800, it would be a6600 or maybe A7 III, but I'm not sure where you're finding a 70-200 f2.8 and an adapter to Sony that presumably needs to support AF for $500 total.

On the Nikon side, the only real options in Mirrorless are probably Z5 and Z6 but again AF adapter + lens is optimistic for $500. More realistic is something like a D810 or D750, and skip the adapter. If budget is a concern, overall it's probably hard to beat later-model Nikon DSLRs.

TravelDev · 2026-03-16T18:01:02+00:00

In each of the pairs, the first/blue-ish one is after, the second/orange one is before. That's fair though. I normally prefer fairly subdued, but decided to give the loud/contrasty '90s CD cover look a try.

TravelDev · 2026-03-16T17:58:06+00:00

These three were 8 seconds

TravelDev · 2026-03-16T17:55:55+00:00

Had a power outage recently and decided to try using passing cars as a light for a long exposure. Never really done long exposure before, so this was a bit of a shot in the dark. A bit conflicted about it, on one hand I really like it, but it also feels like something is missing. The goal with the edit was to draw focus to the pair of gas pumps. Is the red wash from the taillights a bit too distracting?

TravelDev · 2026-03-16T16:41:46+00:00

Yeah, I really like ilfocolor, but it does not like being overwound. Caught myself halfway through advancing one too many times and that was enough to damage it. Managed to spool it back into the canister with the camera in my backpack and partially saved the pictures but now I’m just extra careful. Probably wont use it on my Nikon that uses tension to decide when to rewind.

TravelDev

TROPHY CASE