.rnd(things)

Last year I continued shooting film for a fun and finally I found the perfect camera for me: Olympus OM-2SP. Somehow it feels really familiar as I am using Olympus OM-D E-5M as my digital camera but in addition it fits my hands even better.

The build quality of this camera is solid and using it is a breeze. In addition meter seems to be working way better than in cameras that are this old.

I only have couple of lenses for it 50/1.8, 28/3.5 and 35/2.8. I’m not that big fan of the 28mm but otherwise those lenses seem to be pretty solid. I think I should go and get one of the 135mm lenses not sure which one yet.

In general it seems to have something that the modern E-5M is missing. Although the II version of the E-5M feels somewhat  better than the old one.

First real test for that camera was when I decided to take it to the Crete, Greece and shoot color film. Generally I have mostly used black and white film with analog cameras because it is frankly just easier and I can develop it myself.

Eeva at the old town. Film in this picture is Cinestill Daylight xpro C41. It is rare but kinda nice film. I think it works best in situations like this where there is shade and people.

Snail. This is still in the Cinestill. Works actually pretty nicely here.

Elafonisi beach. Film here is Kodak Gold 200 which I actually bough just because it was cheap.

Beach at Agia Marina. Here I used Kodak Portra 160. 

Eeva. This is taken with Tri-X 400 and pushed to 1600.

Also taken with Tri-X pushed at 1600.

Fujica was my favourite film SLR until a couple of weeks ago. I still like it quite a bit and here are some of the latest photos taken with it.

All are taken with Ilford HP5 Plus 400 film. I finally got around and purchased Vuescan and so at the same time I decided to scan all these photos really flat and introduced contrast back in post processing. Bit more work than straight scanning solution but I think it is generally worth it.

For a quite long time I have wanted to shoot with a TLR camera. The biggest thing between me and that has been the issue that most TLRs I have found have been either ridiculously expensive or in a really bad shape.

While a go I then finally found one that was promised to be in a good shape and price was reasonable. Not cheap like I usually find my film cameras but not that bad either.

So the camera. It was Yashicaflex, and by my estimates it is the C-model. So it is from from fifties.

Actually as a funny thing it is also my second non toy medium-format camera. Usually when I’m shooting with 120-film I use Holga or Diana.

The camera is pretty easy. There is just couple of more steps that you have to remember compared to more modern cameras. So first set the shutter time and then cock the shutter. I feel that focusing is not completely accurate but then again I didn’t use magnifying glass for precision focusing.

The viewfinder is big, like really big but surprisingly dark. Well the camera has maximum aperture 3.5 so maybe that is the reason. The other limitation is that the fastest shutter speed is 1/300. It can be a problem in really bright day.

Still the camera was quite nice although slow to use when I carried it around so it kinda feels alright for street photography.

As a first roll I used some film I got with it. It is cheapo black and white film called Shanghai GP3. In generally I liked the results. I noticed that I have quite many rolls of 120 film in my fridge so next I plan to use Kodak Ektar 100.

Quite often I find a test in our code that follows the following pattern:

it('test a funky thing', function test(done) { testable.doSomethingWithPromises() .then(function (result) { expect(result).toEqual('Promises from the future.'); done(); }); });

All is fine as long as test passes. But when there is an error in the case you get the infamous:

Error: Timeout - Async callback was not invoked within timeout specified by jasmine.DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_INTERVAL.

That error unfortunately can come from many things and quite often we run into it when we want to mock something. But with the current test you actually get it when actually rejecting the promise with sensible error.

Solution of course is simple. Include the catch-part to the test.

it('test a funky thing', function test(done) { testable.doSomethingWithPromises() .then(function (result) { expect(result).toEqual('Promises from the future.'); done(); }).catch(function(error) { expect(error).toBeUndefined(); done(); }); });

I actually would prefer not to have it. Instead I would prefer test to fail if error gets returned without any extra handling.

To make thing a bit nicer I have made a small helper

Sometimes using promises with Node leads into interesting code. 

Currently I'm using node-cache-manager and bluebird. Cache manager is typical callback based library and most of our code is using promises.

So I decided to write general cache wrapper for one of our API client libraries.

Simplified code

var cacheProvider = cache_manager.multi_caching( [cache.memory_cache, cache.redis_cache] ); var cacheWrap = BPromise.promisify(cache.cacheProvider.wrap); cache.wrap = function (key, caller, fn) { var args = Array.prototype.slice.call( arguments, 3 ); return cacheWrap(key, function (callback) { fn.apply(caller, args).then( function (result) { callback(null, result); }) .catch(function (error) { callback(error, null); }); } ); };

Couple of weeks ago I did find a old Fujica ST801 camera. It cost me 10e and it also contained Fujinon 55/1.8 EBC lens.

This time my luck was with me. The camera works perfectly and even the meter is quite accurate.

The camera itself feels pretty good in the hand and is easy to use. The only complain I have is the strap that is too hard and not flexible enough.

Couple of test pictures taken with Ilford XP2 Super 400 film.

Perfect weather for Skateboarding on Flickr.

It has been a while since I last photographed any gig. Or even went to a gig during weekdays.

Anyway last Tuesday my friends had a gig at a local bar/club Mascot and I decided that I could go there and even take my camera there.

It was actually quite refreshing even if it still feels like that there is something missing from my photos. Something that I used to have.

Photos taken with Ilford HP5 Plus disposable camera. I am in the fist photo and my father is in the second one.

I quite liked the camera, even after seeing the results. The camera looks kinda cute and the HP5 is a nice film. Also it is as simple as it gets: only thing you can do is take pictures and enable flash. Enabling flash was bit confusing as it only did show the flash indicator for a short period.

I even don't know why I purchased it as disposable camera. Probably because it looked pretty nice when I was getting some film.