I am presently in a quite delicate situation, explaining my lack of posts in the last month.

Some monetary and private storms heading my way, well, call them real nasty cyclones if you like. I sold some of my beloved cameras, the SLRs and lenses. Bye bye to my beautiful OM1 and 2, I’ll really miss you.

Sold my Canon scanner too….. that was a bigger step to take, as it might really lead me to turn my back on film. YES, YOU HEARD RIGHT! I might really do it. Continue reading “So many choices……”

Some days ago I was wondering which of Fuji’s Instax offerings or Impossible’s rehash of Polaroid film would suit me better.

Well, the decision is done, it will be Impossible Film with a nice old Polaroid camera.

Why did I go for this solution? First, the Fuji Instax cameras are really not great – best of the bunch being the Instax Neo Classic 90 which offers a bit more creative possibilities, but on teeny tiny Instax Mini film.

The Instax Wide 210 or the new 300 are monstrous plastic globs, feeling cheap. OK, the pictures have a decent size, but the results are too clean. There’s simply not this unpredictable side of Impossible film that makes is so appealing. Instax is a nice solution, even the Instax wireless Printer, but it’s a solution mostly marketed to and designed for young partygoers, and I am definitely neither of both (young and a partygoer). Continue reading “The decision is made: Impossible Film !”

No pictures for this post!

No pictures because I have just skimmed through 5 years worth of pictures in my Apple Photos library, containing all my digital stuff, to find something interesting to talk about. I didn’t find any picture that inspired me to write something about it. But I found a subject for today’s rant.

Do digital pictures suck? Continue reading “Do Digital Pictures Just Suck?”

STOP, this is not a rant against digital, against film or one of those boring posts trying to convince the world that one of them is better. That’s plain stupid, as everyone knows clearly that film is way better than digital! (wink, wink) I just like my cameras with those cool film canisters inside, all manual controls and no rear screen I can smear with my greasy nose. These pictures are of the same shop window display, with a nice decoration, taken two or three days apart. The first with my Olympus OM1n with the 50mm f:1.8 lens on Kodak Tri-X 400 the second with my Fuji X30 (I still had it then). Continue reading “Same subject, two views”

I am currently wondering if I should buy an Instant camera again.

For a short time I owned an Instax Wide, that monstrous plastic blob from Fuji, which made VERY decent photos, as well as a Polaroid Spectra and a Polaroid One Step Close Up that were in a decent condition.

Of those, the Fuji made the best pictures, that’s for sure, but they were also the most uninteresting ones! With the Polaroids, shooting Impossible Project’s film, I got very interesting results, either color-wise or in the sharpness department. And interresting is a weak word for the things that happened to the world as seen by Impossible film.

But the Polaroid pictures had something to them, some soul…. I connected more with them. Then again I admire people like the guys at Impossible who just go ahead and do the impossible thing (pun intended) to revive the process to produce film. Same with Ferrania who are in the process of rebuilding the old Ferrania factory and will probably restart their film production in June or July. Continue reading “Instant film….. Instax or Impossible?”

I’m using film and I’m scanning it!

I admit the crime, I’m not a pure film user, wet printing for hours in his dark room, never seeing the light of day, like a vampire…… STOP!

That’s crazy. Film is beautiful! Film cameras feel right in my hand! Developing film is fun! But a lot of people can’t go the whole way!

I do not have the room to build a real dark room.

I do not have the time to make test strips, dodge, burn and after half of one night produce ONE print. Admitted, the print will be beautiful, gorgeous.  Continue reading “Does scanning your negatives negate the film option you took?”

I started developing my black and white films recently only, about one and a half year ago and up to now I have not messed ip a film (guess I’m lucky). I always have wanted to do it, but never had the money (when I was young), the time (later) and the balls to take the step.

So I always gave my films to the local lab, but was VERY unhappy with the printed results, notably with B&W film. Anyway, the price of having film developed being high and going up I decided the moment had come to do it. Continue reading “Stand development, the ultimate solution?”

I was a fool, a bloody fool, some months ago! I sold my preferred camera, and I have regretted it ever since.

What is that camera? A Leica? Some incredible SLR, perhaps the OM1? Or is it a medium fomat Hasselblad?

No, it’s small, diminutive, exceedingly well made, stylish and above all pocketable!

It’s the Olympus XA2     

All automatic, zone focusing, fast….. what do you want more. It’s a camera you can have with you all day long. No strap to carry it, no need of a bag or big coat pocket – the XA2 fits even in my tight jeans pocket.
Continue reading “It’s Back at last!”

I shoot film, that’s the reason for this blog, but it was not always that way.

I have been shooting film since I was young (obviously, no choice there), but switched to digital in the early 2000’s. First I bought a point and shoot Canon to document the birth of my fourth child. It was a crappy thing with 2.1 megapixels, a shutter lag of about 1 second and a screen not bigger than today’s EVF’s.

Then I was lured by affordable DSLR cameras, notably the Canon Digital Rebel….. then a Canon 40D and some lenses.

After that came the Fuji X100 that led me back to film cameras, as I explained in the former post. But since that day, I have been tempted by digital time and time again. I bought a Fuji X10, several X20’s, an X30, an X-E1….. and sold them again.

I never came to like them as much as the Olde Film Stuff. But still they tempt me! Continue reading “That devilish temptation of digital…”

Let me be clear from the outset, this is NOT a review of the Fuji X100 series cameras! This is just my experience with these cameras, notably the original X100 of which I owned 3 or 4 over the last 2 and a half years.

I owned DSLR cameras until 2012, when I noticed that I hardly ever took them out of the camera bag (and said bag stayed put under my desk). As I really like photography and wanted to do much more of that, I started to study reviews etc and found the amazing X100, with all it drawbacks of slow focus, miserable manual focus ability. I got one used off ebay, a very nice and clean one, and had lots of fun with it.

Then the retro look struck me, hard! It reminded me so much of my good old film cameras that I bought some, lots of them, traded them in for other film cameras, tried the X-E1 to get away from all this trading, and still bought more…. GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) had hit me, and hit me bad. Continue reading “Why Fuji got it all wrong with it’s X100 series cameras!”

OK, here we go, this will be the start of (I hope) a blog lots of people will watch and follow religiously.

Strangely, the first post on this FILM PHOTOGRAPHY site will be about using my digital camera, and using it exclusively for ONE YEAR.

I have read this post on The Online Photographer with great pleasure, and I have decided to participate in this endeavour.

I will use One camera, One Lens, One day, and make a print EVERY day. Continue reading “The first post…. if anyone cares”