After I finally set up my bulk roll of Arista 400 Premium I took an evening (while watching a documentary) and rolled out about 12 rolls of varying lengths in the bulk cannisters that the old photographer who sold me the bulk roller had thrown in with the package.

That's one of the advantages of the bulk roller, you can make as long or short rolls as you want. So I made myself 12 shot and 24 shot rolls. My theory is that some days you want to shoot just enough to develop immediately, some days you want 24 shots to last a long time.

This is my sister-in-law and my nephew (who my parents say looks identical to my brother at that age -- I have to agree). The 50mm Takumar on a film body -- "full frame" to you digital shooters -- is really a nice lens for a portrait. On a digital body it remains a great portrait lens, only at a more 80mm-ish field of view.

The shots in this post are all shot with the Arista which some think is Kodak Tri-X. It does look like it, in my opinion. The heavy grain, the heavy grey, all look like it to me. Arista is the house brand of Freestyle photo, where I get the majority of my film consumables, so it is repackaged something.

I had one misstep in loading one roll into my Pentax Spotmatic. For whatever reason, the Spotmatic refused to advance after a few frames and by forcing it, the Spotmatic's gears began to rip out the sprockets in the negative. I had to cut it out of the camera (in the darkroom naturally). So I lost a couple frames out of that. I processed both halves of the roll successfully. Hopefully my era of missteps with bulk rolling are gone.

Storage tip: Ikea Skubbs

On a trip to Ikea last night I discovered these marvellous sock drawer organizers. The Skubb collapsible boxes are meant to fit into a drawer so that you can organize your socks or other small items. That makes them perfect for lenses and other similar sized camera accessories that I keep in my drawers instead of clothing items. The Skubbs come in various sizes too so you can put a nice medium telephoto in one.