A while ago I compared digital and analog photography. Unfortunately I used an old Lomo camera for this, so the results are not really good. However, I got infected with the analog-photography-virus 😉 Film photography is not new to me. My first steps in photography were with film and I used the Exacta cameras from my father. Later I got a Minolta Maxxum/Dynax 500si, but then digital photography started off and I switched to digital. I still have my Minolta Maxxum and could have used it, but in the meantime my collection of MD Rokkor lenses grew bigger, so I decided to go for something older. Recently I bought a Minolta ‘XD’, also known as XD7 or XD11 outside of Asia.
After the camera arrived I went straight into a photography shop and bought randomly a film: Fujicolor Superia 200. Loaded the film and started to take photographs. For a few days I carried the camera with me and learned how to use it. I also wanted to check if everything works well and if the film chamber is light tight.
After the film was full, I brought to a shop for development and let the negatives scan there. The scans are not high resolution (only 2441 x 1654 pixels) but good enough to get a first impression. Later I will need to find other ways of scanning, or buy an own scanner.
My first impression of the results was somehow disappointing, because all images had low contrast. Don’t know what was the reason, if it was from scanning or the light meter doesn’t work well. But this could be fixed in post-processing by histogram equalization. The final result looks not bad to me, some images came out very nice. They are a little bit unsharp, probably because of scanning.
Next step is to try not the build-in light meter of the camera. The camera is more than 30 years old, so I guess that the meter might be a bit off these days. And also need to test other shops or ways for scanning the images.