Shoot what is there!

There is this idea that we always feel like everybody else are better than us. That they take more interesting images than us, and have access to more interesting locations than us. In the past years, I have often chosen not to take photos because I find nothing interesting around at all. I sometimes feel like wherever I go, I will just find lakes, fields and bushes. Not until a few days ago, have I realized how beautiful these fields actually are and how they can make for some interesting photographs. For this blog-post, I decided to go to two different faming towns in my local area to see what I could get out of these areas. I chose to bring out the Olympus Trip Junior and the Nikon F80 for this trip, and I decided to go for a grey and slightly rainy day for this shoot as I wanted to look for those muted tones the grain fields give you on these days. Sadly, I didn’t have Kodak Portra 160 at hand, but I chose to go with Kodak ProImage 100 for the Olympus Trip Junior an expired roll of Konica Centruia 100 that expired in 2002. I have never shot this film stock before, not even when it was within date, but I picked up a few rolls cheaply some weeks ago and decided to have a try. Midly stated, the results were interesting, and I think it might have severely contaminated my C41 chemistry.

Muted grain fields near Skreia – Olympus Trip Junior – Kodak ProImage 100

When shooting a color film through the Trip Junior, the limitations of the lens become more prominent. Now, I like how the image above turned out after some editing, but the lens is far from sharp and has quite soft edges. It does also provide quite a sizable portion of vignetting. That said though, this kind of shot is probably not what the camera was made for anyway. I have different shots later in the post that show the lens more at its strength. However, an image taken with the expired Konica, has a very different array of issues.

Nikon F80 – Sigma 85mm f1.4 – Konica Centuria 100 expired 2002

To be honest, I did not expect the results to be this bad from the Konica film. I have successfully shot a lot of expired film over the years, but never had results this aquarellic. An interesting point though is that the color shifts along the roll aren’t consistent. Some frames are far better than others and some have a bigger variety of color casts. I shot the film at ISO 20 to allow for the twenty years of degradation it has suffered and at least I had images. I also had some imperfections in the ProImage scans, a film that was in date, and I wonder if it could be a contaminated developer as they were developed at the same time.

Anyway, I shot some fields and some shots of the church I parked next to and moved on to my next location. In this image you can see the vignetting and edge softness very clearly, but in this case I think it suits the image and composition quite well. My next location is also connected with farming and agriculture, but in a different way.

Detail from Balke Kirke – Olympus Trip Junior – Kodak ProImage 100

Another important part of the agriculture in this area is the transportation and processing of food, and for this part of my adventure I went to Kapp Melkefabrikk. An old factory area where they produced condensed Milk under the brand Viking Melk in older times. Today, the buildings are used by the local culture school and by other businesses needing space. Also, the buildings are absolutely gorgeous, and I have done some shooting here before, but today I had a different goal than before. But first I obviously made a shot of the factory buildings where I parked the car.

Kapp Melkefabrikk from the port – Olympus Trip Junior – Kodak ProImage 100

Back in the middle of the 20th century, between 1951 and the late 1970s, there used to be a ferry between Kapp and Hamar. Thinking about it, this makes perfect sense. It would cross Mjøsa at the widest point connecting Kapp, an important agricultural place with production of among other things, condensed milk, with the main Norwegian Railway at Hamar. It also had a stop-over at Nes, which is another agricultural hotspot in the area. The problem however, was that the ferry itself wasn’t up for the task. It couldn’t handle the shallow waters at any of the ports, and new ferry ports had to be created with heavy adaptions of the lake-beds. When the ferry finally was in traffic, it couldn’t handle the colder months making the season very short, making the economical aspect of the operation questionable. It also sank multiple times during winter storage and became a laughing stock among the public and a headache for the ones in charge.

Having known this story, and being fascinated by it for years, I still had not been down to the ferry port at Kapp before. That was my next goal. The ferry terminal les mainly untouched since the traffic ended, and I wanted to capture it with the expired film, obviously thinking the film would actually perform decently, but since it didn’t, I have some snaps with the Trip Junior to show and a definite need to go back and shoot it with a higher quality camera to really capture this place.

I am still working on finding the correct workflow for me with camera-scanning color-film and I tried different approaches with the ProImage as you can see from these results.

However, I like how this last one turned out after some tweaking:

So my takeaway from this day was basically – Stop looking for things that aren’t there, shoot what is around! That would be my photographical advice for today.

And… Don’t use expired Konica Centuria 100…

Another stroll along the tracks

Yesterday, I went on a walk along the tracks at Valdresbanen. This railway was closed to traffic in 1989, but the tracks are still kept on a sizable portion of the line. The official closure of the tracks was as late as 2021. I have a fascination for railroads and for abandoned means of transportation from a historical perspective, and I am working on a project where I am doing Valdresbanen. This time, went for a walk from Eina to Holte, a walk of about 4 kilometers along these tracks. I was looking for leftovers from the its glory days. Things like tracks, signs, control boxes, whatever really. Along with me on the trip I brought the Olympus Trip Junior with a roll of Kentmere 100, and the Hasselblad 500C with a roll of Ilford Ortho Plus.

A view from Eina Station where Valdresbanen used to start. The carriages in the middle of the picture stems from Valdresbanen. Olympus Trip Junior – Kentmere 100@400 – Adox FX39 II 1+9

I realised after my last trip with the Olympus trip that it seems to underexpose the film a bit. For that reason I chose to push the Kentmere 100 two stops in development and it seems to have given me good negatives. As we were walking along the tracks from Eina, we came to the small peaceful lake called Skjellbreia. This is the main source of drinking water for the area and is kept very clean and is a quiet are without too many cabins. The tracks around Skjellbreia was also important in the operational days of the line because it was the main loading space for dangerous goods. I am not sure why it was placed there where there were no stations, but that might maybe be exactly why it was there.

A view over the peaceful and lovely Skjellbreia – Olympus Trip Junior – Kentmere 100@400 – Adox FX39 II 1+9

After strolling for a few kilometers, I came across an interesting box that was locked. I could see some kind of connections and switches in there, but I have no idea what they might be for. The line was never electrified and there were no logical thing requiring controls such as traffic lights or a line switch on the line. The box, however, looked quite cool and I took an image of it with both the cameras.

Olympus Trip Junior – Kentmere 100@400 – Adox FX39 II 1+9

When it comes to the film in the Hasselblad. I have struggled massively getting good results with Ilford Ortho plus. I love the grain it produces and I love what it looks like when other people use it, but in my results, it tends to become very much black and white with very limited shadow detail. This time I tried it with Adox FX39 II and I am moderately happy with the results. I do much prefer how the Kentmere 35mm film came out to what I got with the Ortho Plus this time. I find the initial results with the Ortho were very contrasty and almost black and white. I did some tweaking, but I am still not very happy with them.

I also walked passed a few signs along the tracks. These old signs are quite interesting to me and they inspire me to take images. I made a little happy mistake on one if them when I was trying out different compositions on a sign. I was trying to figure out how I could get the sun out of the frame when I accidentally pressed the button on the Olympus. I actually like the image that came out very much.

A lucky mistake – Olympus Trip Junior – Kentmere 100@400 – Adox FX39 II 1+9

In all seriousness though, the signs around this portion of the line weren’t the most interesting. Most of them were either distance marking or speed markings, but I made a few shots anyway and there are a few I really like.

When developing these rolls, I had to do some guesswork. I wanted to used Adox FX39 II on this shoot because like the way it looks on slower films. Additionally, I wanted to know how it would work on a two-stop push with the Kentmere film. I found a time for the Kentmere 100 at box speed in FX39 II at 6 minutes 30 seconds at 20 degrees, but no time anywhere for the Ortho 80. My solution was to find times for FP4 plus and HP5 plus and see how they compared with other developers. I came to 8 minutes of development time with continuous agitation. This did give me very nice negatives that seemed correctly developed. However, there were no side markings on the film, So it couldn’t be judged that way. Anyway. If I am to use this film again, I would most likely stick with this development time.

A trip with Trip junior

A few days ago, found an old Olympus Trip junior and decided to try it out. The Olympus Trip Junior is probably the cheapest and simplest camera I have ever used on this blog, I payed the equivalent of about 2 euros for it in so-called unknown condition. My test before buying it was putting batteries in it and listen for the advance and shutter if they both worked. They did and I bought ut.

The Olympus Trip Junior is a very simple camera. It is a point and shoot camera with a fixed focal length of 33mm and a shutter button. It also has a flash and three different ISO-settings 100, 200 and 400 ISO. From my first experiment with this camera the exposures were a bit inconsistent so I am not sure whether the ISO markings are mainly aimed at the flash or if it does indeed have different shutter speeds or apertures. Not having been able to find any manuals for this camera, my guess is that it has a fixed aperture of about f8 or f11 focusing at about 4 meters, and that it has one shutter speed of about 1/80. These are just my guesses, and should not be taken as facts.

My Olympus Trip Junior from this outing.

For my first trip with this camera, I chose to do something along the lines of my most recent project, stopping at locations I usually drive past. Now, I have shot many shoots at the old abandoned train station at Fall in Søndre Land in Norway, however, this abandoned piece of railway has more stations and even a walking path along it. So this time, I went to a different station that I have previously never seen. Trevatn. Not knowing how well the camera worked or how indeed it worked, I decided to go with a film of about 200 ISO. Ilford FP4 shot at 200. I chose this because I just guessed that if it was such at a setting it would likely be at 200, as it was the most popular film speed for hobby users when the camera was new.

Approaching Trevatn Station – Olympus Trip Junior – Ilford FP4+ @200 – Adox FX39 II 1+9

Since I was uncertain how this film would turn out, and if the exposures would be correct, I decided to play it safe and slightly over-develop. I found a time of 7 minutes 30 for FP4+ at 200 on the massive dev chart, and I chose to not make any corrections for it when using a rotary processor. This means that the film was likely pushed to about 320 if not 400 ISO in development. I chose to use Adox FX39 II as my developer as this is a developer I have found to like quite a lot lately. I like how it looks with FP4 as you can see here.

Overall, I think the images turned out very well. I expected the camera to give some severe light leaks, but I couldn’t find any traces of leaking at all. This surprises me, as the film door seemed rather flimsy. But somehow, the light seals must be very good. even when the door isn’t firm.

The lens does what I would expect a point and shoot lens to do, It gives a reasonably sharp image with a bit of character to it. I find it quite good and very much enjoyable to play with. I might bring this camera along with me on some trips in the future just to do some happy-snapping.

The images are camera scanned using the Valoi easy 35-system and a Fujifilm X-T3 camera.

My first encounter with Ilford SFX200

I have tried many different films through my time of experimenting with analog photography, but there is one film that I have looked at at the back of my fridge for quite some years. That film is the two rolls of SFX200, a black and white film with an extended sensitivity to reds. A so-called near infrared film. Now, I do like the look of near-infrared photography, and how it has the potential to lift a sunny day into something more abstract and effect full. In my previous dabbling with this type of photography, I have always defaulted to Rollei IR, but I have had some unfortunate situations with that film having mottling and other imperfections that have sadly ruined quite a few shoots for me. Maybe SFX200 is better?

Löfberg factory in Karlstad Sweden – Olympus OM-1 with 50mm Zuiko f1.8. Ilford SFX200 Ordinal 1+25

I have read a bit about this film and I have understood that it is considered a rather grainy film. I do agree with this assessment, however, I see a vast difference in the graininess of this film between it being correctly exposed or not. A correctly exposed frame has a far more delicate and less clumpy grain feeling than a poorly exposed one. To embrace the grain a bit, I chose to develop these two films using Rodinal 1+25. My development was 5 minutes continuous agitation with the AGO-processor. The films came out perfectly developed and it really highlights how different this film feels at different levels of exposure.

The first of these two rolls were shot last summer in Karlstad. This film was mainly shot at its IR-capacity with a 720-filter. The film was shot with an Olympus OM-1 with a standard 50mm Zuiko lens. I shot different locations, and I did some bracketing to make sure I had a decent exposure. I’ll add one shot here of some metal parts at a water lock in Karlstad. I just love how metal looks on black and white film developed in Rodinal.

Water Lock in Karlstad Sweden – Olympus OM-1 with 50mm Zuiko f1.8. Ilford SFX200 Ordinal 1+25

Here are some other shots from the first roll shot in the Olympus

For the second roll, I decided to try using it more or less as a normal black and white film. I chose to use my Nikon F80 camera with a Tamron zoom lens 70-300mm. This being a lot more modern set-up with a relatively modern lens, I chose to go for photographing birds by the lake Mjøsa. I know a place where there are a lot of seagulls sitting on light posts and guarding their territories. I chose this as my location to test out the second roll as a normal black and white film.

Seagulls by Mjøsa – Nikon F80 with Tamron 70-300 f4 – f5.6 – Ilford SFX200 Rodinal 1+25

To be honest, I don’t really see any difference in these images as to why I would shoot SFX200 as a normal black and white film. I would get the same results with HP5. That said, I do like how it looks and how the image above turned out. The flying seagull makes it work for me.

As a conclusion I can say that I absolutely love this film as a near-infrared film. I think it seems to be a more reliable emulsion than the Rollei films and I don’t see any major imperfections in it. Yes, it is grainy, but I like the way that grain looks and I even like it in Rodinal. As a normal black and white film however, I would rather shoot HP5, which both has a higher speed and is a tad less grainy.

Thank you for reading.

When you mess up development

I haven’t written a post here in a while because of different circumstances. Moving houses and other life changes have taken a lot of time and I had to prioritize those things over blogging. This summer and autumn, however, I have made myself a project called «Stopping where you usually wouldn’t». In this project, I am exploring the places I drive past on a regular basis. Instead of driving past them, I am going to stop and search for something that catches my eye.

Today, I went out for the first round of these trips. I drove towards where my old house was, and stopped about a kilometer before I arrived there, on a little parking place next to the road. A place mainly used by farmers who have grazing sheep in the area. Today, I made my stop. After some searching, I found a composition. A piece of a tiny stream where I saw a fence pole reflecting in the water crossed by a little log that had fallen into the stream. A few rocks in the background. I tried a few shots of the composition and went back to develop the film.

My film om choice this time was a roll of Kentmere 100 that I shot using the Hasselblad. I have not really used Kentmere 100 that much, but I had one in the fridge so I figured why not. When developing, I chose to go with Adox FX39 II. A developer I have used with students in an enrichment course on analog photography. The bottle was opened in late April, and had turned slightly brown-ish, but not worse than I have seen before. I figured it was fine… Which was a mistake. When I took the roll out of the tank I immediately realized that this developer was dead. The negatives were insanely thin and I managed to save only one of the images, the most over exposed one, shot at f2.8, making it a bit soft.

I wish I had used a different developer for this process, but it is a bit too late to change it now, I guess. I’m here presenting you with the result of me completely screwing up the development. Adox FX39 II is a great developer, the Kentmere is a lovely film, this one is 100% on me.

I do like the composition here, but I wish I had more information to go on in making this image. I might have to go and reshoot this location at some point. I am impressed on how much I could retrieve though, the Kentmere 100 must be a pretty decent film with this developer on a regular situation with a functioning developer. My process this time was 8 minutes 30 seconds continuous agitation using the AGO-processor.

I also see that I need to have a look at this film back, as the roll has consistent streaking.

I hope my next entry will show more of a success!

Thank you for reading!

Two rolls of Ferrania Solaris

I have been interested in photography since I was a very young boy. I remember back when I got my first camera, an old Ricoh Point and Shoot camera, how I would walk around and try to find things that I could photograph. Cars, People, animals, buildings… Anything really. In what I think must have been 2002 I got my first own SLR camera as a gift from my uncle who was a journalist. The camera was a Nikon F60. This camera is sadly faulty now, and fixing it would cost more than the camera is worth.

Around the same time, 2003 or 2004, I went to Italy for a summer holiday with my family. Back then, I was a young aspiring photographer who was part of a photography club in my local town of Gjøvik in Norway. On this trip to Italy, I came across a film stock that I had never heard of, and obviously, I bought some rolls and tried it out. The film in question is the Ferrania Solaris 200. A consumer grade film with a lovely lush and vibrant color palette and maybe a bit more grain than other films I had tried. I absolutely loved the results I had on my rolls that I had developed in Italy and on my way home, I picked up a 3pk of Ferrania Solaris 200 on the Airport. I can still remember finding it very cheaply at Ciampino Airport. I bought them without thinking about anything else. Only once I came home, and put one in the camera and went shooting, I figured that the films only had 12 frames. Which to me back then was nothing. I would see that differently today. I was very disappointed and forgot the two last rolls in the basement. I found them when tidying up there this summer. Expired in 2008, stored in a heated basement since 2003 or 2004. What could possibly go wrong here?

Since I had two rolls, I decided to use them differently. One of them, I decided to treat as I would normally with expired film, overexpose by 1 stop pr decade, meaning I shot this one at ISO 50. The camera I chose, the Olympus OM-1, does not have half or thirds of stops as an alternative, so metering at something like 64 doesn’t really make much of a difference to shooting at 50. Since I was already going a trip down memory lane with the choice of film, I also chose to go to a location that to me is filled with memories. The local petrol station that was recently closed down. To me, this was a place to go and buy ice cream as a child, and I do remember being sent there by my father to buy the news paper back in the days. I bought an ice cream that was too expensive and couldn’t afford the news paper and had to go back and beg for more money. A bit embarrassing to say the least. Anyway. This was my choice of location because of its vibrant Circle K colors. The evening was bright and warm and I got those Ferrania colors that I remembered from my rolls in Italy.

I had two frames left and decided to just photograph a tree by the lake, before I went on to the other film. I managed to capture some cyclists passing the tree, which made for some lovely motion blur.

Motion Blur and tree – Olympus OM-1 with Zuiko 50mm f1.8 – Ferrania Solaris 200@50 (expired 2008) Developed by Oslo Foto

For the second film, I decided to experiment a bit. Since the film is rather sensitive to blue and has a relatively light base, I decided to attempt red-scaling it. I mean, when you’re already shooting at ISO 50 with a tripod you can easily compensate three extra stops for red-scaling.

Now, I like the look of red-scaled film. I think it gives a level of abstraction that makes «boring» conditions more interesting. However, I do prefer to compensate three stops because it gives some light to the blue layer, making the blues visible. To me, this gives a more interesting effect than shooting the film for red and black images.

Depending on how well I hit the exposure, the film did really well in red-scale. I like how the warmth of the film shines through and makes it look like a slightly tilted color palette, and not just black and red. The middle photo was slightly under exposed and had more reds in it.

Overall, I find it a bit sad that this film is off the market now. It was a lovely film and I would love to still have it in my arsenal.

Expired slide-film

I am usually not a big user of slide film. I have shot some rolls in the past, but due to both cost and availability, I have not really gone deep into the positive films. In this entry, however, I am shooting slide film. And not just any slide film, I am shooting a roll of Provia 400F that expired in 2002. 23 years ago. I’ve obviously heard the warnings about shooting expired slide film and how temperamental it can be, but the guy I got this film from claimed that it had been stored in a freezer for most of its life. Hence I took the risk.

A Norwegian flag on a very Norwegian location. Hasselblad 500C with 80mm planar – Fujifilm Provia 400F expired 2002

I decided to use a reliable camera which gives me a great deal of control. My Hasselblad 500C. A camera that I absolutely love to use. I chose the most Norwegian of locations I could come up with. Kalven Sæter around Lemonsjø in Vågå Kommune. The day was mainly overcast with some rays of sun, and I chose to double my shots, to make sure I got the best results. I shot one frame at box speed and one shot a stop over. Overall, the box-speed shots came out best.

I’ve heard all those horrible stories about severe color casts etc, but with this roll, I seem to have been lucky. I got a slight cast towards magenta, but nothing I couldn’t deal with in post. The images came out very sharp and slightly green-cold tinted as I would expect from Fujifilm. I do miss Fujifilms colors in the market these days. It was one of my favorite film brands to use.

Overall, I am impressed with how this film turned out. The development in E-6 was done by Stavanger Foto, and they also scanned the film. I have been very happy with them for development before and they did not disappoint this time either. The slides and scans came out great.

Would I recommend anyone shooting old expired slide film? Probably not, but I mean, why not? As an experiment it is good fun to have some slides lying around. They look magical and the new films are far too expensive to shoot a lot of.

Working with long lenses

One of the things I have been working with lately, is familiarizing myself with long super-tele lenses. I recently found and picked up a Vivitar 400mm lens for my Olympus OM-system and I also have a 75-300mm Tamron Zoom lens for my Nikon F-system. I have used the Tamron a little, but I have never explored it on the longest setting. For that reason, I decided to make this a project. I shot three different films. A Kodak ProImage 100, an expired Colorama 200 and a roll of Kentmere 100. The ones in-date were shot in the Olympus and the Colorama in the Nikon.

I first went out on an evening outing with the 400mm Vivitar. I shot a roll of Kodak ProImage that I had lab-developed my OsloFoto. I shot most of the shots on a tripod using a cable release. The lens is so long it cannot be safely hand helt by the camera without risks at the low shutter speeds I had to use. It was inspiring seeing how much was now suddenly a possible picture and seeing how I now had to think composition in a very different way.

Olympus OM-1 + Vivitar 400mm f5.6 – Kodak ProImage 100

I started looking for things that would usually not work as compositions. Like the top of the electrical masts at the location and some people out fishing in the lovely weather.

I then figured that a long lense like this would most likely produce a lovely bokeh and I chose to see if I could get some lovely macroesc shots of plants and flowers. The Bokeh is silky and looks really nice to my eyes.

My next experiment was keeping a roll of expired Colorama 200. A consumer grade film made in the EU. My guess based on the colors is that we are talking about a repackaged Agfa Vista 200, but the film is expired and it is difficult to know what is attributes to the film and what is degradation over time. The film is 20 years expired and was shot at ISO 50. I managed to shoot it decently hand held on my Nikon F80 and I got a few interesting shots from this combination as well. My main focus for this film was some cows grazing in a field next to where I live. I made these shots when I was out strolling with my little daughter trying to get her to nap.

For the last outing I also shot some images with the 50mm f1.8 because I went to an interesting location I have visited a few times before.

The images above are shot with the 50mm lens and a yellow filter for contrast. I didn’t find the same luck on this outing with the longer lens, and I have to go for another outing with black and white. These images are shot with the Olympus OM1 and a roll of Kentmere 100. I developed it myself with Adox Atomal 49. A fine grain developer that I have found to be fantastic. It has a bad reputation for being highly toxic, but so are most developers anyway. Considering that the SDS-sheets we look at are referring to the powder and not the stock of working solutions, I would argue that most developers are stock and working strength are reasonably safe when taking proper precautions. I always use gloves, eye protection and a dust mask when mixing the solutions. I also use gloves and eye protection when developing with a liquid solution.

My favorite image from the 400mm on this trip is this little spruce.

Olympus OM-1 – Kentmere 100 – Adox Atomal 49 1+1

I have truly enjoyed working with this project and I will keep working on my long-lens skills. You might see more here in the coming months.

Playing with lamp posts

Some days ago, while driving home I realized that there are a plethora of different types of lamp posts in my local area. Different both in design, placement and light source. I decided to spend a roll of Kodak Tri-X, a film I rarely use, to play with the lamp post and a red filter for contrast. I had never tried using a red filter in different conditions before, and I decided to just leave it on regardless if the lighting conditions changed from sunny to overcast. This turned out to be a mistake and some of the shots did not come out well. However, the well exposed turned out very nice.

Canon T70 – Kodak Tri-X 400 – 510 Pyro 1+100 semi-stand

To take these images, I had to look up into the sky, hence my idea to use a red filter for the backgrounds. I like how the sky and the contrast to the light post turned out. I see little bit of evidence of dust inside the camera house, which I will have to figure out at a later point.

This roll was also the first roll I developed using 510 Pyro, a developer I had heard so much about but never really tried. I bought a bottle that I will be trying out over the coming months. The concentrate is a bit gloopy, but not anything I haven’t seen from HC110 in earlier developments. All in all, I am very happy with the results. The grain is surprisingly fine on the well exposed negatives, and obviously more prominent on the underexposed negatives. This is my fault entirely.

A seagull started to dive towards me at one point. I like how the grain makes this image more active.

Testing a Minolta X700

First of all, I need to apologize for my long absence from this blog. I have not posted anything since September of 2021 when I tested a beast of an Olympus camera. The reason for my long absence is the loss of a loved one, my dear sister who passed away on October 2021 just 28 years old.

I was a bit unsure on how to reappear on this blog, but the opportunity came to me through a colleague who presented me with a Minolta X700 with three different lenses. She said it had worked when she last used it in the early 2000s, but that it had been sat in a storage somewhere in Canada where she is from. I gave it some new batteries and cleaned some contacts, attached a 24mm lens and off I went.

It was a bright and sunny winters day in the eastern innlands in Norway, and I went to Kråkvika and Fall railway station for the test. In the camera was a bulk rolled Agfa APX 100 film, a film I have struggled with previously, but I figured that it would suffice for the purpose of trying a camera in bright sunshine if I chose subjects that stands our by themselves.

Minolta X700 w 24mm Minolta lens. Agfa APX100 Rodinal 1/100 Stand

The images you see in this entry are unedited. They are just scanned with a Epson V600 scanner and simple Epson software as it is only meant for a test. I chose to go with Rodinal stand development for this outing because I have found it to work the best with the Agfa film I am working with at this point.

The shooting experience with the Minolta is very nice. I like the way it sits in the hand without being too heavy or too light. It seems to be without any light leaks and to be very well kept and maintained. The viewfinder is big and bright and it makes focusing very easy as opposed to other cameras I have tried where the viewfinder is dark and also somewhat scratched from many years of use. I also like the way the lenses attach to the camera and how sharp they are.