A bad workman blames their tools, and a bad photographer blames their camera, right? Well, on Friday I retrieved six films from the developers (five, actually, one of the rolls of XP2 apparently hadn’t been exposed. Mind you, they naffed the other one up completely, so…), and the shots are… crock. Pretty much all of them. There are maybe three decent frames in the whole bundle, which is mildly irritating.
Some are dodgy because of vignetting, a significant issue with my wide-angle zoom that annoys me intensely. Some are badly framed, fair cop. Many exhibit horrific camera shake, which is fairly inevitable when shooting 100ASA indoors without flash, and not unexpected.
Worst, however, is that pretty much every frame is scratched, really badly. And no, I don’t believe it’s the developers’ who’ve done this – I think it’s the camera body. It’s done it before, and there have been signs that it’s getting worse (though it’s also mysteriously gone away, on occasion), but these negs are mostly wrecked.
I think it’s time to admit that I basically don’t have a camera better than my mobile phone, and to push the D50/D80/EOS 400D/whatever up the priority list. Ho hum.