Over the past year I’ve been figuring out ways to combine my new passion of film photography with my old passion of bicycle travel. I’ve bike toured to many places since my first tour in 2005, including a big cross-continent jaunt. Pandemic has curtailed any grand ambitions, so for the time being I’ve kept my trips local.
This past spring as the temperatures warmed up in the Pacific Northwest, I decided to do a quick “bike overnight” to one of my favorite places–the Columbia River Gorge. Here is where the mighty Columbia on its way to the Pacific Ocean carves through the volcanic Cascade Range. This “water level” route through a steep mountain range means an easy route for travelers, whether by boat, train, car, or bicycle. And that carving action has created numerous vistas and spectacular waterfalls, making this area one of the scenic highlights of Cascadia, if not the US. And convenient for me, this natural wonder is just about 20 miles/33 kilometres east of my house in Portland, making it a fairly effortless place to get to by bike!
Wednesday May 12th shaped up to be beautiful: ample sun, temps hitting 77 F/25 C. A perfect day to head out to Ainsworth State Park, my preferred camping destination in the Gorge. They have a hiker/biker site at this campground, which is a spot dedicated to cyclists or folks arriving under their own power. The hiker/biker requires no reservations, to it’s handy for spur-of-the-moment trips. I opted to be a bit more luxurious and instead booked a regular spot. (The hiker/biker is more a group area, and I was still a bit leery of sharing my space due to COVID.)
I was getting ready to pack some film when I learned that my regular lab had run out of C-41 chemicals, meaning no color negative development until they got it back in stock. What to do? I could shoot normal color stock and wait a bit, or find another lab. But I decided to veer in another direction and go with slide film. The lab still had a supply of E-6 chemicals, so there would be no delay. I had a couple remaining rolls of expired Kodak Elite Chrome 100. It could be fun to shoot travel photos on it, and the copious amounts of sunlight that were forecast would be perfect for ISO 100 stock.
But then I veered even further. I had shot my last batch of slide film with my Minolta SR-T 101, a nice mechanical SLR. It just seemed “logical” to shoot slide film with it, but it is a big, bulky camera. I wanted to travel light. What about my Olympus Pen EES-2 instead?
A half-frame camera with basically no manual exposure control? Are you serious? Well, yes I am. People did shoot slide film with cameras like this back in the day. The crucial thing with slide film is exposure has to be spot-on, and with an auto-exposure camera the metering needs to be correct. My Pen EES-2 had been freshly CLA’d by Portland Camera Service, so I knew that its meter was working properly. No worries there. While the D.Zuiko 30mm f/2.8 lens on the EES-2 is no slouch, the fine grain of transparency film will mean the resolution loss of the 18x24mm frame shouldn’t be as severe as using a grainier emulsion. So I put my fears aside and loaded the Pen EES-2 with slide film!
Over the course of my tour, I stopped at many of the scenic highlights, pulled the Olympus Pen EES-2 out of a pouch on my loaded Bantam bicycle, and snapped away. Camping at Ainsworth was great. It’s pleasant to fall asleep under a deep canopy of trees. I dropped the roll of Elite Chrome 100 off at the lab after I got home. The results were pleasing: the colors vibrant, exposure good, shots generally in focus. The Pen EES-2 handled the challenge like a champ. The beauty of the Gorge shone through!
I’m going to share 10 frames since each one is half the size of a normal one. 😉
Thanks for reading! – Shawn
For more photos from this trip, check out my Flickr album.
And check out my blog and me elsewhere on the internet here.
Very nice! Great pictures with that camera!
Thank you, Fred!
A resident of Portland for many years, I worked as a lawyer there and used to love going to see clients in the Gorge. I used the excuse of the length of the drive out there to stay away from the office for the day. While I have many of my own photos, thank you for some more views and for brining back good memories.
You are welcome, Peter! Living in Portland, it is great having the Gorge in the backyard for when we need it.
Expired slide film, on a half-frame Pen – my first thought was “Wow, that’s really quite a brave decision!”, but the images turned out great! I particularly like the gorgeous vignetting on the, presumably wide-open, tent shot – it really adds to the image for me.
Incidentally, my go-to film camera of choice for cycling trips is also an Olympus Pen – the metered manual D3. These are such brilliantly tiny cameras. I can stick mine in a bum-bag / fanny pouch along with some tools and I won’t even know it’s there.
Thanks, Alan! I had a Pen D (the first one) for a hot second. But the meter didn’t work and the shutter was sticky. I’d like to try another D-series Pen at some point.
great set thank you
Shawn, It was scenes like this that inspired my short but intense love affair with touring. Alas ,I didn’t have what it took for bicycling across the U.S and Canada so I did it on a motorcycle in the late 1970’s and early 80’s. My camera companion was a Canon ftb and then a Canon A-1. I still shoot with the ftb. Your photos could be mine except replace the bicycle with a motorcycle. I had a small umbrella tent that made for easy setup after dark. Those times are some of my most fond memories and I can’t imagine that I was ever that adventurous! Thanks for sharing your story and photos.
Thank you, Bill! Do you have your motorcycle touring photos online anywhere?
No, I don’t have any form of social media presence at this time. All of my tour photos were shot on Kodachrome 64 so I just need to take the time to scan them. I am presently preparing for an exhibit that will showcase 42 years of my photographic film archive that is devoted to Dallas, Texas. In conjunction with the exhibit I will be creating a personal website. Once I have completed this project and have a website I will then start the process of bringing more of my personal film archive into the 21st century so that others like yourself can share a little bit of my enjoyment from those wonderful days. Thanks for asking.
Cool! I’d love to see those Kodachromes when you get them scanned!
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Slightly late to the party. I shot K64 of all things on a Pen EE my dad gave back in the 70s. I learnt to avoid to high contrast shots. But still got a surprising number of keepers given that was probably only 14/15.
Cool! Glad to hear someone else used slide film in a Pen EE series. I hear you about the “high contrast shots” bit, I’ve also learned that the hard way!