New Roll / Just Kinda Rambling (Patreon)

35mm film for a change! This is a roll of Fuji 400 through the Nikon N60. Perusable at Flickr, download at Drive.

Interestingly, I learned from a friend of mine (Chirasul, the creator of Coelary, a comic I love!) that Fuji 400 does actually have different sensitivity curves than base Kodak Ultramax 400, likely due to a slightly different layering process during production. It is meant to replicate "OG" Fuji Superia, with more green sensitivity. Apparently, there was a period where Fuji 400 was rumored to be just Kodak film (sometime in the past few years?), but that was an anomaly due to supply issues, not the norm.

Notably, this roll (and I believe the last two before this) did look a little different than most of what I shot over the winter, although I had ascribed that to scanning differences rather than the film stock itself. Perhaps I've actually gotten some fresher stock that has the newer layers? Maybe I'm just paying more attention? Not sure.

Notably, however, Fuji 200 is identical to Kodak, and always has been. They apparently don't bother with this whole process for that, for some reason.

Film stock aside, I like how this roll came out, though, mostly. (I probably wasted too many frames in a semi-drunken state of excitement on board the Amtrak Cascades, but it had been a really long day.)

There's been a lot of really long days lately. Unfortunately, I got some more job rejections this week (for some jobs I really actually thought I had a shot at) and I know if they replace Jerome Powell this weekend with Bessent, like Trump has said he's "considered", the economic fallout is going to make 2008 look like a mild blip.

Anyway, hopefully the US isn't plunged into yet another historic economic crisis vastly larger than any single person can comprehend for like the third time since I was a teenager, but I doubt that!

On the bright side, I got to shoot an event that the Seattle chapter of Dykes on Bikes held that was really fun. They had live music and flash tattoos and also, if you are a femme (like me) who likes to see butch bikers (like me), it was like rolling in catnip.

Here's my favorite stories I read this week:

Zohran Mamdani and Mahmoud Khalil Are in on the Joke by Hanif Abdurraqib for The New Yorker. A gorgeously written profile about two fascinating men, with more courage and principles between them than can seemingly be found in all of Congress, meeting.

Killer Train: Why Florida's Brightline Passenger Train Is The Deadliest In The US by Brittany Wallman, Aaron Leibowitz, Shradha Dinesh, Susan Merriam, Daniel Rivero and Joshua Ceballos for The Miami Herald. This piece is what investigative journalism should be. As someone who knew that Florida's Brightline, anecdotally, wasn't very safe, this piece lays out a devastatingly well-researched indictment of what happens when we allow private companies (and NIMBYs!) to write safety procedures that impact the rest of us. (As an aside, as someone who tried to do her best at Real Journalism, the work done here is so utterly impressive. It's worth reading for the depth alone.)

The Real Future Of AI Is Ordering Mid Chicken At Bojangle's by Matthew Gault at 404 Media. This lived experience personal narrative is entertaining, thoughtful, and also a pretty sobering picture of the future we are almost certainly going to live in. I hope you like upsells.

Anyway, I am currently trying to write an article about car pricing and how everything is so expensive. Hopefully I'll have that soon.

In the meantime, thanks for reading!

Vicki <3