The Hasselblad XPan is not noted for it’s usefulness in wildlife photography, still less in birding. The longest lens is a 90mm f4, which equates roughly to a 50mm in “normal” 35mm terms. Arguably.

So when I was looking for something to scan today (it was raining), I came across a very untypical series of shots I took at Latrabjarg, Iceland, in 2004. That day - or rather night - I was photographing puffins using my Olympus E-1 with 50-200mm lens (that’s 400mm in 35mm terms), when the battery died. And I didn’t have a spare with me, and the spare was about 20km away. Bugger.

So,throwing convention to the wind, and to the amusement of my companions, I switched to the XPan. There can’t be many other places in the world you can get close enough to wildlife, even less birds, to get away with this, but these puffins have no predators on land, and really couldn’t give a damn about some strange animal crawling towards them waving a weird object.  Of course they didn’t really stand still long enough to get many shots - this is shot on ISO 100 Velvia 100F, at f4 I imagine. Maybe 5.6 at a push.

But still, it sort of works, and is vastly different from the standard DSLR shots I got once the battery was recharged.

p.s. Afterwards, I discovered that the E-1’s battery has a sort of “rebound” effect. Leave it off for a bit, switch in on again, and you’re good to go for another 50 shots or so. Same goes for the E-400, but not the E-3, which eats batteries like a pig in donut shop.  Anyway, in this case I’m glad I didn’t know, I’d never have even considered this otherwise!

Today was SWISS HARLEY DAYS (well one of them) in downtown Lugano. Yay. I don’t like Harleys, mainly because of the obnoxious and totally unpleasant noise they make. But I had to go downtown anyway - ironically to go the chemist to try to find something to stop me making obnoxious and totally unpleasant noises while I sleep - so I didn’t have much choice but to grin & bear it. And the streets were crawling with Harleys, Harley Guys, Harley Chicks, and people selling pretty much anything with Harley branding.

Great opportunity for street shooting, no ?

Well yeah, but I don’t do street shooting.

So just for a complete change, since I decided to do some street shooting, of Harleys, why not throw in another spanner and dig out my long-retired Canon A1, put a roll of slightly out of date Ektar 100 in it, and bolt my rediscovered 50mm f1.2L on the front ? And so I set off.

Terrible iPhone photo…but rather gorgeous, isn’t it ?

I took me a little while to get into the groove, but I soon got back into it. Frames 14, 15 & 16 have some great shots featuring bits of a bikini-clad biker chick posing for all and sundry on a very impressive Harley. Unlike the slobbering mob focusing on her more obvious attributes, I went for close up, f1.2 gorgeous-detail. Frame 15 features a close up of the tattoo on her ankle against some detailing of the bike’s chrome. Awesome.  Frame 17 is a KILLER. I got a large Harley dude with a patch saying “great legs, what time do they open ?” on his leather jacket, with the patch in the foreground, and her legs, which did indeed match said criteria, in the background, lying on the Harley. WHOA! I’m motoring here.

Well, of course I would have been if the camera had been switched on.

It’s simple, shooting with film, isn’t it ? Just set the aperture, set the speed, focus and click. Bingo. Well yeah. If, that is, you remembered to turn the thing on. Unlike my digital wonderboxes, or indeed my XPan, the A1’s shutter will fire with the camera - and hence the meter - switched off. I’m not sure why. There’s no control over shutter speed, or is there ? Can’t remember.  I’m not sure why I didn’t realise there was no meter display, either. So, after frame 18, I switched it on.

Oh well. Back to the hot chick, who is starting to look a little concerned at this weirdo with the antique camera.  The rest of the roll was sort of ok, but really not as inspired. What the hell, I’ll rewind it and take it the last surviving 1-hour shop.

Oops. Seems I didn’t quite remember how to load a roll of film into an A1.  Oh well. Again.

So I went home and did a bunch of chores, for example lying on the couch thinking about what part of the gardening to do.

And later I went back into town with two more rolls of Ektar, the first properly loaded, camera switched on, Av mode, ready to rock.  The hot girl was looking a bit frazzled by now (it was a hot day) but was still game and so was I, but the bikes and been moved around and the geometry wasn’t there any more. Nevermind, I still took a few shots, and then wandered off to take some details of bikes, and some more street shots, including a nice candid of two pseudo-Angels. At least I hope they were pseudo.

And then I came home. And I decided to write this post. And I took the photo above. And while fooling around with the A1, I noticed that the aperture on the 50mm seemed to be stuck wide open, as it was when I first tried to put it on my E-P2.  Oh well once more. At least a good number of shots were at f1.2, so I guess something will have worked.

But in any case, it was really, really fun using this camera again. I felt, I dunno, somehow sleek and graceful (ha!) compared to all these people lumbering around with huge DSLRs, constantly chimping, photographing from 2 miles across the street with zoom fully extended.

Film is fun. Even when it doesn’t work. Oh, and Harleys are ok, too.