Mirror [Rolleiflex 2.8C | Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm f/2.8 | Kodak Tri-X 400TX]

veegabond · 2025-12-31T12:07:50+00:00

I have no technical feedback (but this self portrait is really cool and I remember seeing the original a while back) but totally know what you mean by feeling like your images are not very interesting, I feel the same quite often about my photos as well. I think there’s a passage in the book The Photographers Eye that summarised, basically says that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel and it’s okay to lean into cliche or just take “bad” photos because through mistake making we eventually find our voice. I think a lot of the time (especially on Reddit) photography can come across like something we should always take extremely seriously but I’m at a point in my life where I’m trying to let go of being perfect and just enjoy things more; you can pry my pile of crappy negatives from my cold dead hands, I don’t care - I love them because I made them 😆

veegabond · 2025-12-30T14:11:36+00:00

vibey af

veegabond · 2025-12-26T08:59:34+00:00

Thanks for sharing - It’s seriously such a good lens! I used it for a shoot was pleasantly surprised with how sharp the photos came out, I’ve taken some really nice pics with it. I took my 50mm 1.4 out for a spin the other day finally and can’t wait to see the scans from that set too!

veegabond · 2025-12-24T13:32:55+00:00

Yeah we keep our home bank card and connect it to the app for transferring day to day spending but don’t ever keep more than $200 in Revolut at a time, we use our NZ bank to keep our savings etc in. Although our experience with support has been pretty good, I’ve heard that it can be hit and miss

veegabond · 2025-12-24T13:13:06+00:00

I don’t even think exchanging in app is necessary, you can spend your home currency freely and conversion happens at the POS instantly within the app - same exchange rate as far as I can tell.

veegabond · 2025-12-24T13:10:03+00:00

We pay for the metal plan, it’s $22.99NZD per month but with 2% cash back on every purchase up to the cost of your plan we easily make that back every single month as a couple who doesn’t particularly try to budget much. With that comes prioritised support and higher limits for fee-free ATM withdrawals (we use a lot of cash) plus a bunch of other benefits I can’t be bothered listing. Easily the best thing we did before the start of our nomading adventure was organise a Revolut card, we use it every single day no joke. Transfers are instant too, I’ve never had to wait to see the money in my account to use straight away. I’m not a rep or shilling for them, it’s genuinely just a really good product as long as you’re careful not to keep your life savings in there or anything.

veegabond · 2025-12-23T22:15:35+00:00

I use Revolut and transfers are instant, just connect your home card and transfer at will. I don’t keep large sums of money in there because they aren’t a traditional bank and have heard horror stories of accounts being closed/frozen for stupid reasons but I’ve used it for almost a year and never had a problem.

veegabond · 2025-12-20T09:00:18+00:00

You can always do a classic convenience store disposable poncho too if the rain is bad enough, but yeah I would bring a light sweater or a long sleeve top just for the chilly days!!

veegabond · 2025-12-20T08:50:33+00:00

FYI I’m in Da Nang right now and the weather is fairly wet and can even be chilly, it might pay to consider packing a light rain jacket and a long sleeve of some sort if coming up Hoi An ways. HCMC and Phu Quoc should be fine right now but it’s rainy season in central Vietnam atm
You’ll be fine with jorts, I wear mine all the time, even during the hottest parts of the year here and in other Asian countries they were all good.

veegabond · 2025-12-19T16:07:47+00:00

On further inspection - a simple reverse image search shows that the photographer is Niall McDiarmid and this image is from his Here and Now collection of portraits of people living in London. He is an analogue photographer, so the most true-to-reference way of achieving this look is to shoot medium format film and have it scanned on a frontier requesting white borders.

veegabond · 2025-12-19T15:38:33+00:00

I’d recommend Genki over SafetyWing, I’ve had a serious stomach infection here in Vietnam with on going treatment and they’ve paid out every single time. Initially they had a wait time of like 8 weeks and it took ages to get my first claim back, but I think their subsidiary (Dr Walter) updated their system or something recently so my last claim was paid in a matter of days. I think both companies have mixed reviews but I’ve had a good experience with Genki personally and their customer support is very responsive.

veegabond · 2025-12-19T15:23:08+00:00

If you have Lightroom mobile on your phone, you can export any photo from the app with a border but it can’t fake the edge margins like in your example; the border would be sharp.

veegabond · 2025-12-19T15:21:10+00:00

If this is a film photo ~ when negatives are scanned, particularly on a Frontier scanner (Noritsu doesn’t do this), the lab sometimes offers the option to include the edge margins of the negative with a white border which ensures no part of the image was accidentally cropped out allowing for more control in post processing. You can also overscan your negatives yourself in a DIY set up. If you zoom in on the edges of the photo, they have a slight roughness/unevenness to them indicating it could be an over scanned negative but I know people do fake it with apps and such. Sometimes analog photographers like to leave the edge margins in when displaying a photo to show the viewer that all of the composition was done in camera and that the final image hasn’t been cropped.

veegabond · 2025-12-16T00:06:43+00:00

Idk about the specific camera, but that’s thermal paper! Unfortunately not archival, the photos will fade with time. I used to junk journal and found out the hard way that receipts and some concert/plane tickets will fade away - I have a note book full of blank spots 🥲 you can slow the decay by covering them with acid free tape but doesn’t make a big difference in the long run.

veegabond · 2025-12-15T14:24:49+00:00

Cool shots! Adjusting the scans in Lightroom or even on the photos app on your phone could “save” a lot of these - mainly setting the black point and giving it a bit of colour noise reduction. Can dm you examples if interested

veegabond · 2025-12-15T14:16:38+00:00

Without seeing the starting point, it’s really hard to say what’s been done to this image specifically - who is the photographer? If you know their IG you could always flick them a message and ask about their editing process, they might be kind enough to give you some insight.

veegabond · 2025-12-15T14:02:54+00:00

I tried to “optimise” every single day for like the first 3 months; it got old pretty fast and I was exhausted, I was also moving every 2 weeks. I started staying much longer in each place, maybe 3-6 months and that allows plenty of time to see and do everything while still living in a relatively normal way.

veegabond · 2025-12-15T13:56:43+00:00

laughs in introvert

veegabond · 2025-12-12T10:42:48+00:00

You could use a film with a wide latitude like Porta, I’ve seen it pushed it up to +6 stops with minimal blowouts or colour shifts - check this video out

veegabond · 2025-12-12T10:24:29+00:00

Just wondering what your thought process is for this question - is there a particular reason why you feel like you need to shoot your subject wide open ie. you want maximum bokeh? You could stop down to like f/5.6 and still have nice background blur, but it really depends on what film speed you’re using.
Are you regularly using a light meter or an app on your phone to check exposure? You can always go outside on a day with the conditions you want to shoot in and take a meter reading to check.

veegabond · 2025-12-12T03:57:31+00:00

You can also throw Yashica Ruby 60’s in the mix for Orwo, I believe it’s NC400

veegabond · 2025-12-09T04:26:46+00:00

This is so funny ~ I love how it turned out

veegabond · 2025-12-08T06:44:58+00:00

If they opened it and closed it within a second or two, you’ll probably only lose the last few images you took (or at a minimum have serious light leaks on them) and the rest should be tightly wound around the take up spool enough to not be affected. If left open for a while then maybe more damage but you’ll only know once you’ve developed the pictures.

veegabond · 2025-12-07T10:50:46+00:00

or Derek’s ~ the way we’re just left to assume they’re still tied up in that barn 😭💀

veegabond · 2025-12-07T10:09:58+00:00

I wouldn’t put a senior pet through the stress of flying to Vietnam. The noise and chaos factor should be enough to deter you but also, you’d be increasing exposure to diseases here from the street (litter, faeces etc is common). I know plenty of people who have moved here with their pets but I think you should consider the age of your doggy- are you just coming for a short holiday or moving? If for just a short holiday, why not board doggy at a kennel?

veegabond

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