staycation, day three.

So, yeah.  I wanted to get some unobstructed morning light, and I got it in spades between 6:30 and 9am this past Monday.  I hopped aboard a Coney Island-bound Q train Monday morning and disembarked in Sheepshead Bay.  3.5 miles and a lot of boardwalk later, I got on an F train at Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island, completely underslept and delirious, but with 4 or 5 rolls of film — 35mm and 120, color and black & white — filled with snapshots from my amble.  Most of the betracksuited older Russian emigres paid no heed to me, other than to look quizzically at my twin lens Yashica Mat 124.

I was mostly pleased with how the photos turned out, though the Yashica continues to give me problems.  I don’t know if the metering is off, or if I’m not doing something right, but I can’t seem to get the exposure consistent.  That, or there’s something inside the lens mechanism itself that’s fogging up the photos (though not all of them — see the photo immediately above, of the upturned chair in the empty lot — which is why I don’t think it’s a lens issue; at least I hope it’s not).  And I don’t remember Ilford HP5 b&w film being so low-contrasty!  Most unfortunate.  (See the previous post with the two b&w photos of Brighton Beach.)  But otherwise, the 35mm stuff turned out pretty well; it was a mix of Leica (Kodak Tri-X 400) and Spotmatic (Kodak Ektar 100), and I think I captured the dull morning light decently enough.

Around 10:00, after I’d dropped my film off at a lab in Park Slope, I ducked into Daisy’s Diner on 5th Avenue, and tucked into a plate of huevos rancheros.   Once I picked up the developed film, I headed home, and by noon had passed out quite soundly.  For every insane early morning photo action, there is an equal and opposite reaction nap that follows.