Camera Oasis

What do Walgreens and CVS drug stores do with the film negatives that aren't returned? Mystery solved. But hardly satisfying. . I've probed this since my Aug. 2016 post . When I asked Walgreens why they don't return negatives with photofinishing orders, a manager called me. He explained that his store sends all film processing orders to District Photo, a Maryland wholesale lab. They send nothing back to the stores -- prints or negs, he said. Image files scanned from negatives are transmitted to the store, where prints are produced and the files are written to a CD. This led me to District Photo, where a polite woman named Ruth informed me that District's contract with Walgreens specifies no return of negatives. That's at Walgreens' request.  District retains the negatives for 30 days, then destroys them. So, Walgreens says it's District's issue. District says Walgreens tells them not to return the negatives. Amid the online finger-pointin...

I've lately been shooting with some 35mm film cameras. Partly to determine whether they're worth keeping or selling, and partly because I have rolls of film in my basement that date back to as late as 2006. Kept cool, film can last well beyond the date stamped on the box. But you wouldn't want to risk your pictures from a major event -- wedding, graduation, or vacation -- to film that's out of date. Parkleigh Crystals, Film from 2008 One example: the photo at left: photographed with 200-speed color negative film short-dated from 2008. The camera: Olympus Stylus Epic , perhaps the best fixed-lens compact 35mm point-and-shoot camera ever sold. What does a film camera give you that an equivalent digital camera can't? In a word: soft backgrounds. While most of the colored crystals in this image are sharply focused, the less-important elements are soft and de-focused. This adds emphasis to your main subject, and can help create a mood. You can also get this eff...