As I mentioned a few posts back, partly inspired by the photography of Johnny Patience and a few others I discovered through his blog, I decided that on my recent trip to Sardinia I would take just 5 rolls of Portra 400, and my resurrected Minox ML. Oh, and my Hasselblad XPan.

The Monox was a lot of fun to use. With no real expectations, there was no pressure, and I just pointed it at things and clicked. I’ve just received the processed films and low-res scans back from the lab (Fotolab.ch) and below are a few samples. I’m very pleased with the colour and tonality, but the scans are a little dark and of very poor quality. There is a linear defect running all the way across most of them which is not on the negatives.  And one film came back with a handwritten note saying “the emulsion was damaged”. Possibly time to change labs, and I certainly would think twice about sending mission-critical stuff to them.

I don’t know if I’ll carry on with film, or at least with negative film, but I have to say aesthetically I can see the attraction.

There are some shots I’d never have attempted on digital. Then again, others that I couldn’t take with Portra 400.  All a matter of choices.

Tomorrow evening we’re off for a long needed week of relaxation, in the very familiar surroundings of Sardinia. My initial thought was not to take any camera at all, because if I do I’ll feel under pressure to use it.  Last year, also in Sardinia, I did get a few interesting shots, but by and large I’d probably have done better just to settle for the beach.

But, well, what I’ve ended up doing is I’ve decided to try something different. I’m getting a little jaded with digital cameras, even though the Olympus E-P5 is very nice, and the Sigma twins are fabulous when they’re having a good hair day, I just don’t feel like dragging all the paraphernalia of chargers and whatever with me.

So I bought some film.

I’ve never used Portra 400 before, but since sooner or later I’m going to need to move away from reversal film, I decided to give it a try. It gets a pretty good write up from all sorts of people.  Hopefully it will be better than Ektar 100, which is a bit too Velvia for my tastes.

My earliest visits to Sardinia were film-only, so this is a bit of a nostalgia trip. Not decided yet if the XPan is coming along. I might just take the Minox. And maybe the XA, one with Porta, the other with Scala. E100G is reserved for the XPan.

There’s a lot of talk these days about the revival of film, and how film is better and just switching to film turns you into an instant mega-hip star photographer. Well, frankly, that’s utter bollocks. Back in those pre-digital years when everybody used film, was everybody a totally brilliant gifted photographer ? No, they weren’t. Most were crap. A far higher proportion than today were utterly hopeless. The instant feedback and accessibility of digital has had a huge impact of helping many, many people to become brilliant photographers.  Most people who have “rediscovered” or just started using film are producing truly ghastly work, seemingly believing that drastic overexposure will turn any sow’s ear into a silk purse. Of course there are exceptions - many exceptions - but as a trend, it’s all more than a little hollow.

I’ve also just discovered and download a nice little iPhone app made by Kodak - remember them ? Anyway, it’s largely a bit of marketing fluff for Kodak film, but I’m all for that, and it is very pretty. I haven’t found the section on Kodachrome or Ektachrome yet though.  It does include a location finder for approved development labs and film retailers.  In my case, these (both of them) are 250km away, on the other side of the highest mountain range in Europe. No one said shooting film was getting easier.

(I can highly recommend Photo Studio 13 by the way. One of the very, very few labs that still process Agfa Scala)

Some more photos from my rediscovered Minox 35ML. It’s a fun camera to use, and can deliver excellent results, but the relatively time consuming hassles of buying, developing and scanning film have to be taken into account. All of these taken around and about in Ticino, on kodak BW400CN film.

Also, I’m experimenting with linking photos to Flickr rather than hosting them myself, since Flickr will do so for free.  For this purpose I have created a second Flickr account, as I don’t want to mix these up with my main account.  Let’s see how it goes…

Many, many years ago I owned a little camera called a Minox ML. At some point it developed some kind of defect. I went to a shop in London to buy a replacement, new, rather than secondhand, to take on a trip to Venezuela. The shop manager persuaded me instead to buy a new-fangled camera called a Ricoh GR, which had just come on the market. I did so, and that Ricoh - the first camera I ever bought new - pretty much introduced me to high quality photography. I must still have had some regard for the Minox though, because at some I did get it fixed. But then it sort of got forgotten. In fact when I tried to find it a few months ago, with no luck, I assumed I must have discarded it or given it away at some point.  Until two weeks ago when I found it quietly nestled up in a corner of a cupboard.

Of course the 6V battery was dead, and the battery type is very hard to find. I managed to cobble together a battery using 4 1.5V cells, which seems to work fine.  I’ve also now found a couple of PX28 batteries, from the wonderful Foto Moderna in Siena, one of the last real camera shops I know of anywhere in the world.

And the camera works fine.  I loaded it up with a test roll of Kodak BW400CN, and soon got into the swing of things. It’s interesting comparing it with the Olympus XA I acquired a few months ago. Both have very good f/2.8 35mm lenses, both have built-in exposure meters, but the XA has a rangefinder while the Minox just has distance scale focussing. Actually, I don’t find that the XA’s rangefinder is that much use, and the Minox’s focus ring is much more practical than the XA’s lever. Same goes for the aperture ring versus the XA’s slider. As for image quality, well I’d need to use the same film in both, but my feeling is they are either pretty much equal, or the Minox is a little sharper. Either way it’s a bit late for a side-by-side test! But I find the Minox more fun.  It really is unbelievably compact, and robust … and, hey, “full frame”!

Here’s a couple of shots. You’d never get the dynamic range in the second one on any digital camera I own.

Fooling around with old cameras isn’t going to make my photography any better, but, well, it’s a lot cheaper than fooling around with new cameras!