Eye of the beholder

There's something electric about having unprocessed film in your hand. This past week was spent with two cameras in hand. Not at the same time, mind you. Although that almost would work. One camera was a tiny Minox 35 PL. A plastic-bodied folder no bigger than a pack of cigarettes. The other camera is a beautiful Contax T, which is technically a knock-off of the Minox, but a much more solid unit, with a lens that is clearly where the $600 was invested. I dropped a roll of Superia in the Contax and a roll of Kodak BW400CN into the Minox. Having fed both rolls through the light-tight boxes, I potentially have 72 Pulitzer Prize winning photos waiting to be viewed. On the other hand, I also potentially have 72 underexposed fuzzy blobs waiting to be thrown away. And that's where the excitement lies.

My camera and film is essentially the film equivalent of Schroedinger's cat. For those among us who aren't familiar with the philosophical gambit, Schroedinger argued that a cat placed in a sealed box containing a mechanism entirely too elaborate to explain here (partly because I don't understand it, and partly because I'm just too lazy), is fated to be killed by an acidic cloud if/when a specific random event occurs within the sealed chamber. The debate posited by Schroedinger is that the cat maintains a state of being both alive and dead while the box remains sealed and unobserved, but instantly assumes one of the two conditions the exact instant the chamber is opened. Thus, it is the observer who determines the final fate of the cat.

And such it is with my two sealed rolls of 35mm film. This afternoon, when I pick up the negatives from the cute girl working the Target store photo lab equipment, I'll determine the outcome of my photographic efforts. I hope karma doesn't run over my cat.