XP2 is a black and white film that is developed using C-41 (colour) chemicals. This gives it the advantage of great exposure latitude. The datasheet says photos can be taken anywhere from ISO 50 to ISO 800. I’ve found 1600 worked alright too, just with a bit more grain. XP2 is made here in the UK, so it’s a bit cheaper compared to Kodak’s offerings.

With this roll, I began adding EXIF information to my photos. I use an app on my phone to keep track of all my settings, then I run a script I wrote to automatically add the metadata to the scans I get from the lab. This way I keep a lot of the data that is added automatically by DSLRs and is helpful to learn from. I also started using a program called Darktable to edit my photos. Darktable is a great free and open source alternative to Adobe Lightroom that runs on Linux, making it perfect for my workflow. I’m still learning to use it, but I’m very impressed by the fine adjustments it can make.

The first few shots on the roll had a few issues with light streaks. They were placed inconsistently in the frame, so I’m pretty sure they aren’t because of a light leak in my camera. They are also vertical, and the shutter in my camera closes vertically, so I can’t imagine they were caused by the shutter. It was probably just the film; hopefully I’m right about the camera not being the problem. I cropped the first photo to solve this. It is slightly visible in the sky in the second one.

Here’s a better quality version of my pinhole camera’s shot of the Duke of Wellington statue. After cropping and making slight adjustments in Darktable, I opened it in GIMP (a free Photoshop alternative), and colourised the traffic cone for fun.

We had a week of snow here, and the whole city shut down. The stores were either closed or empty, the roads deserted. Here’s a comparison of similar photos before and after the snow:

I was walking through the city centre on the day the snow began. Here’s a couple of photos from that walk:

I meant to check out the Lighthouse on that same day, but by the time I got there they told me the staff were about to go home because of the snow. I went back a week later, after the snow melted a little. The view was amazing, but getting up there wasn’t easy. I’m afraid of heights, and the stairs are narrow and very high. It gets to be a long way down quite quickly. Eventually I built up the courage to climb the stairs and avoid looking down. The picture I took from the bottom was shot around ISO 2000-2500, so it didn’t turn out great, but the ones from the top were pretty good.

On the way back home I saw this thing. I’ve no idea what it is, but I figured it merited a photo.

The next day I went back to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. I took a couple there to make up for the roll of Portra that I lost. They’ve hung a Spitfire from the ceiling. I thought it would make a nice photo. I’m not really sure if there’s a good way around the highlights on the roof and lights.

This is from their Conflict and Consequence exhibit:

I didn’t take any photos this weekend. It’s been raining and I was attending the Glasgow Economic Forum, which was a lot of fun and very informative. It’d be nice to have a similar event at UBC instead of the endless case competitions and climate talks sponsored and led by LNG lobbyists.

In the lull of the snow storm I reinstalled all the software on my laptop. I’m still using Debian, but I made some pretty big changes. I’ve abandoned Gnome and adopted the i3 window manager which is much lighter on memory and has some nice features that are really suiting my workflow. I also removed my Windows partition and transferred my Windows license to a virtual machine so I have more flexible use of my hard drive. I only use Windows about once a year on my laptop anyway. I’m still using LVM to encrypt and manage my disk for now, but I hope to experiment with ZFS integration in Debian this Summer. Hopefully Canonical’s plans to ship with ZFS are adopted by the rest of the community.

I am going to the Isle of Skye next weekend, so I should have a lot of photos from that trip. I’m planning to try a roll of Velvia 50 if it’s sunny enough, but I will definitely shoot some more Portra as well because the Velvia has to be mailed to a lab in England. There is nowhere close by that will develop E-6 slide film.