Weekly Notes 2024 W04

This is yet another weekly update where I would complain that the week was difficult :)

Started this week by attending a conference with my team on Monday.
Work-wise, I have been way behind in my work and now I am a bit worried that it may have consequences this week.

This week too, I worked from home.

Thursday evening, I spent time with my team playing arcade games and go-karting in Loco Bear.
This cheered me up.

The coffee beans from Kapikottai got delivered.
I have mostly made iced pour-over from this. Still tuning it in - but the one I had on Thursday tasted quite good.
Back in December, I bought some coffee beans from Savor Works. Pinanas - Pineapple-fermented coffee.
I mostly made pour-overs and also made cold brew from this.

Cold brew with tonic water has been my favorite recently.

Friday, I was planning to take time off from work, but decided against it and worked for a few hours. Unproductively.

Saturday, I came to the office and worked with our intern for a few hours, guiding on an internal project.

Saturday evening, I brewed some D76, and then developed and scanned the negatives I had shot last week (More about it below).

Sunday afternoon, I had lunch with Orpa in Shetty Lunch home Kormangala.

We tried Chicken Ghee roast with neer dose.
The ghee roast was average. Had a slight sweet undertone to it which I am not a fan of.
We also tried Kori rotti with Gasi.
Although the taste was quite different from how it is made back home, this reminded me of my childhood.
I enjoyed the tangy-spiciness of the gasi.

I took bus the both ways.

Back in Indiranagar, I had my coffee at Tribal Coffee on the Wheel, which is nowadays parked at 6th main, Indiranagar.

While returning, I took some photos on my phone - and that made me happy.

This coming week is going to be packed and also will be traveling to see my parents, and I am scared.

Link to Images I made during 2024W04 is here

Last week, I had a roll of Fomapan 400 in the camera, that I was shooting at ISO 320.
I was experimenting with Fomapan 400 and D76.
It was suggested to shoot Foma400 as a 250 ISO film.
The datasheet also points to development pulling the speed of the film down.
So to play around, I was shooting at 320, as 250 felt a bit challenging to shoot.

I had a few images from the street already when I decided to attend the Ankur and Ghalat Family Concert last Sunday.

I may probably have chosen a faster sensitivity film if I had known earlier but I had no plans about shooting in concert until I was there already.

Having the f1.4 lens made it a bit easier to shoot in the low light conditions at the concert.
I was using a light meter Android app to check the lighting in the scene.
I used f1.4 and 1/30-1/60 shutter speed. I switched between 1/30 - 1/60.
Although 1/60 would have been enough, I wanted to be safe.
But I think going that low also caused a bit of blurriness, along with the general difficulty in focusing at f/1.4 in low-light conditions.

I had already finished around 30 frames out of 36 in this concert.

Throughout the week, I didn’t have any energy left in me to go out and shoot.

Friday, I took a few portraits of Anil and Girish, and they too took some of mine. I think most of them are okay.

While shooting the first portrait of Anil, there was oblique sunlight hitting the face, and I metered both sides of the cheeks.
But I forgot to put Ansel Adam’s Zone system into practice and the adage of “Meter for shadows develop for highlights”.
I think with that, the image would not have been so contrasty.

One side of the face is mostly dark. But I was able to reduce the contrast a bit in Darktable - and I think the image has a certain character, although by chance.

I was worried about the back-lit stage of the concert lighting causing issues and faces getting underexposed. So I decided to develop it by pushing it to ISO 500, about 1/3rd of a stop from 400 and 2/3rd of a stop from 320.
There was, of course, no standard timing for this.
The massive dev chart recommends 11-13 minutes for 400 and 17 minutes for 800 push.
I assumed this was linear (Without any proof) and divided the time difference by 3 and arrived at 14 minutes and 20 seconds as the time for my development.

I was happy to see the results. There were quite a few out-of-focus images, but I had a few that were clear, and the exposure looked good.

Some of the Images I like from 2024 W04

This was the first image of the roll.
I was walking back to the office on the 100ft road Indiranagar.
I saw this man smoking. I lingered around a bit, checking for light, etc., behind this car.
I tripped the shutter the moment I saw him take a drag. The person sleeping inside the car also probably adds to the image.