test roll

I picked up my first Horizon 202 [1] prints from the photo lab today.

They were test rolls for a new and unfamiliar camera, and I was hand metering for the first time in a long time, so I expected overexposures and maybe some lens issues.

I got both.

But I wasn’t expecting the lab to make such a cluster of the development work. Especially after I told them that they were panoramic shots when I dropped off the rolls on my run to the airport the day before last.

They had a half a dozen good reasons for why I got 4x6 prints back sliced any which way instead of panoramics (when a simple “woops. sorry. we goofed.” would have worked just fine.) I told them I’d be happy to pay for the negatives (even though those, too, are mangled) but not the prints. They seemed startled that I wasn’t chewing them a new one and, rather than figuring out how to charge me for a fraction of my order, said go ahead, they’re yours.

So I didn’t pay a dime for the development, which in some ways is a shame, because as I’m patching them back together again -- avoiding the temptation to match my seams and deciding instead to show a clear gutter where the machine cut the print, which sometimes leads to repetitions -- and as I’m patching them together I’m slowly falling in love with this beautiful mess.

Plus, bonus points for the fact that the swing lens appears to go quirky when it gets to the far right hand side of the frame, and on several of these prints the odd machine crop has created some really remarkable remnants -- that I think I might like even more than the parent composition.



[1] a Soviet made swing lens panoramic camera from the 1970s that I picked up recently on eBay.