5 frames with my Minox 35GT

I first got interested in photography in around 1982, at the tender age of 15, saving my pocket money to buy a Zenit EM, and three years later, having started work, a Minolta X300. Then as work and family life evolved, I had a variety of cameras but it was mainly just point and shoot type 35mm and digital compacts – photography was not a hobby for me by then, just a means to record family stuff.

In the last 12 months, some ten years after retirement, my interest was peaked once more by the resurgence of film photography and, following watching an espionage documentary series, I picked up a beautiful Minox B from my birth year, 1967. The inevitable happened and, due to the ridiculously low cost of many decent vintage film cameras, I began to collect a few. The second camera was this one – the Minox 35GT – which I snapped up from a Facebook ad for the princely sum of £35. In immaculate boxed condition, with flash and manuals, I popped in some Ilford FP4 and went snapping around my locality.

My local town of Wiveliscombe, Somerset in England is a mile up the road from my house. It is a small rural town on the edge of Exmoor National Park. A few snaps there were unsuccessful (I forgot to focus!) but I did manage a few I was pleased with, including the rear entrance to the local Churchyard – St. Andrews.

Heading into the centre of our small town, I was lucky enough that there was a temporary road closure, allowing a traffic-free shot of The Courthouse. This building was not, actually, ever a courthouse, but was built in mock Tudor style in the 19th Century by a wealthy local beer brewing family called the Hancocks, as a family home. For a number of years now it has been an interior design shop and is run by a good friends son.

A few days later, my youngest son and I headed into Wellington, some six miles away, for a mini photo safari. Our target was the once huge, but now crumbling, Tonedale Mill. It was famous worldwide in its heyday for turning local fleeces into the finest fabrics and tweed. Aspects of this work still survive locally, albeit in a modern setting, in the guise of Fox Bros., a company owned and controlled by the ‘Dragons Den’ TV star and local business woman Deborah Meaden. The first photograph here was taken through a locked gate of some of the minor outbuildings, and beginning to play with Lightroom for the first time, I couldn’t resist adding some fake vignetting for a real olde-worlde look!

In another part we managed to gain access to the interior shell of one of the buildings, and with the aid of a tripod, managed another pleasing image. In this picture the highlights in the distance, where the evening sun was driving through, is somewhat burnt out and I had next to no details in the shadows of the original. However, I was delighted that I was able to reveal that shadow detail in Lightroom – the best of the old and the new technology combined saved the image.

The final shot here was of the exterior fire escape of one of the largest buildings, which came out of the camera pretty well. The buildings are in serious risk of further decay and there are plans to try to at least stabilise them until investment can be found.

This was my first roll of 35mm film in over 2 decades, and it went off to Analogue Wonderland for development and scan, but, like many readers I am sure, I have now taken the plunge into development, developing three rolls of Minox sub-miniature film this week. I am also digitising my own negatives now, using my OM Systems Pen EP7, macro lens and light box / copy stand. The second film in the GT is now two-thirds complete, so I look forward to processing that one all by myself. I am delighted to have found my way back into film photography after so long an absence.

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