My weekend wasn't exactly all that exciting.  I had hoped to do something "fun" with Sweetie, but when I asked her what she wanted to do she said she wanted to just relax.  Darn!!

Sunday I once again was without company on my trip to SF to get my Dad's old negatives evaluated.  I was a little nervous again about driving in the city.  The shop I needed to go to was not on the main streets, so I was nervous about ending up on a "bad" street with just Sweetie.  I'm not neccesarily afraid to defend myself, but it's not really in my nature to put myself in "iffy" situations.

I managed to navigate to the shop without too much trouble and once again choose parking in a lot that was over priced, but conveniently located.  I'm starting to see a pattern here with city parking.  You can park on the street if you can find a space, but you do take risks doing that, or you can pay out the nose for average to inferior parking lots and they'll keep an eye on your car.  I need to get into the parking business.

As I went to enter the building I noticed a sign telling people to use one side of the double doors.  Okay.  I pulled. Nada.  It was a set of glass doors, so I could see inside the building.  There was a guy sitting behind a counter on the phone a few feet from the doors.  He was doing his best to ignore me.  Finally my persistence paid off and he hit a buzzer to let me in.  I tried the door again as soon as I heard the buzzer.  Nope.  We went back and forth with the buzz, pull, buzz, pull, buzz, pull.  He made pantomine motions to PULL which I did with the same effect.

By now I'm irritated with this guy.  I'm thinking "get off the fucking phone and walk your skinny ass over here and open the door!", but on the outside I gave him the "I'm too simple minded to work this here fancy door" smile.  He remained on the phone.  Finally I keep some pulling pressure on the door and he buzzed it while I did that.  It seems like a lot of work just to get into a building.

I walked over to the counter with my box which had the negatives in it.  He pointedly ignored me, still on the phone, for a few minutes.  I planted myself squarely in front of him.  Finally he did the little head nod thing and I started to explain why I was there.  He cut me off and directed me around the counter and down the hall to the "reception" desk at the back of the floor.  Okay ........... by now this guy is really getting on my nerves.  Worse yet I suspect he's the asshole I'll have to deal with to get copies made from the negatives.  Great.

I talk to a nice young man at reception.  We take the box and unload the negatives on a large work table.  I'm embarrassed that Dad packed them in an adult diaper for padding, but he seems to acknowledge that it is not too bad an idea.  The negatives impress him and he seems struck by the fact that I know these people in the pictures and am related to them.  Sure enough the jerk in front is the expert for these types of negatives.

I wait for a while.  Sweetie and I are looking around the building.  Lots of photos, cameras, displays (some very cool).  They also rent out studios and dark rooms, so the place is huge.  Finally the guy comes over and looks at the photos.  I can tell he's excited by the good condition they are in.  I ask him if it's possible to make prints from them and he says yes and then a bunch of technical stuff after yes.  I know I'm not terribly stupid, so I ask him to explain it to me.

Apparently the glass plate negatives will have to be photographed and the image reversed.  They do not have the machines that originally were used to make prints from these plates.  Apparently it's that old.  The tin types can be scanned, but he feels that a reversed digital photos will also be as high a quality a print.  Since he's doing that for the glass plates it makes more sense to go that route with the tin types.  All of this for the magical price of $80-120 dollars.  I pick up the digital files and my negatives next weekend.

I asked about having a tintype photo shot.  This guy does them.  The display of his shots is very cool.  There is a luminescence to them that you can't get with a regular photo.  I don't think I'll be able to afford it soon, but I would like to have it done with my kids.  To add to the family photos.  (think car payment in terms of cost.  Nice car, not cheap car)  On the way out we saw an old fashioned photo booth.  Apparently it's still functional too, so we went back to the "reception" desk to buy tokens to put in and have a strip of photos taken.  We were told the booth is from 1947.

I'll try to get the scanned strip that Sweetie and I got taken.  It came out kind of sepia toned and cool.  Same snotty guy in charge of handing out tokens, but he did give me a break on the price ($2.50 per strip) so I guess he's not all evil.