boardners

gorky's cafe sign board.                    ©1992 Paul Posadas

at a time of being "mr. mom" and living in valley village (a block north of studio city on whitsett). it was so convenient for me to just stroll with stefani (nickname "stephanie") up to the nearest rite-aid on whitsett and magnolia, to get my film done. estella, the photo section manager, is so knowledgeable and skilled with photofinishing, that to this day because of this, i still go to her for my 35mil portra stuff. estella is true to her printing profession and i clearly see this when she was so kind enough to share with me the idea of shooting with Kodak's Portra which they actually don't carry but they DO Process. i said to myself she's another "Sherrie". Sherrie knew her stuff. Back in the day when Noritsu machines were so popular, i actually knew some one-- Sherrie who managed a "Fox one hour photo" ,  would actually let me print my own stuff as long as i help her run her customer's  film through the c-41 processor and also print them.  fair enough. anything for me having control over the quality of my own stuff.  Valley camera and studio which is a stone throw away from rite-aid, sells Portra. i've been shooting this film now a couple of years and having estella process them because she does quality work. you pay a little more for this film but it's worth it. portra by the way is professional film, that not many places have their equipment programmed for this type of film, only for  the standard consumer ones.  i dropped by to visit estella not to long ago to process this ROLL i found in the side pocket of my domke which had a felt pen marking of "6" and with the film spool leader protruding out of the can. out of curiousity,  i quickly loaded up with this uncertain roll on the 105mil mounted F2 and fired up the rest of the film on stefani ' till the advance lever crank stopped.  while i was picking up the already done photos, Estella asked me if my wife had another baby, i replied "not that i'm aware of" jokingly and looked at her and asked "why?". she say's there's a photo of a baby from the film she printed that i dropped off.

the comparison of the two photos reveals a 2 year gap. i must have taken the film out of the camera so i can immediately  try the Portra film.

whenever you'd find the ONYX CAFE dead on a Friday or Saturday night, it's because
everyone's at DOUG and SALLY'S.

so, i widened up the lens opening by 0.40mm and i am getting consistent exposures on a 12 exposure roll of film, both b/w and color rated at 400, indoors and outdoors with the standard (so they say) f/8 opening. i am so ecstatic. "no more wasting film."

my next target was  to create "f/11" to correspond to the "sunny" icon, since the "cloudy" is already represented by  "f/8". other "holga users" create another opening that rides on the swinging arm
window (which is a logical thing to do), and of course this should be smaller to give a full stop to f/11. while i was snipping my b/w negs. i got the idea of using the base acetate of the film to go onto this arm window instead of  trying to create a smaller opening with some other type of material. i measured the film acetate base using a light meter placing the film between a light source and the meter (an old minolta IV with spot), i consequently got a full stop reading.