A little while ago during the summer I organised a Beers and Cameras Photowalk through the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford. It was a really nice walk with a beautiful bunch of people, all carrying a diverse range of gear. There were the ubiquitous FujiFilm rangefinders, some SLRs and a wide range of compacts. All pretty interesting in their own way but Isa stole the show with his massive Pentax 67.
First time for everything. Months ago a box arrived from Analogue Wonderland. Inside said box were a number of films. One of which was a 36 exposure roll of Kodak Portra 800.
I had never shot it before and had no idea what to expect. I used the hashtag in Flickr and Instagram and saw a lot of low light portraits illuminated with some street lighting or neon lit windows for background.
I hadn’t ever shot slide film until I bought a few fresh rolls of Agfa CT Precisa 100 in January this year. A mate with much more experience than myself told me he wanted to shoot slide film at the London Lumiere Festival and that sounded like it could be fun.
When this film arrived from Analogue Wonderland I was stoked. A friend had brought back a roll from Japan last year and we all know about the ever decreasing lines of film coming out of Fujifilm so getting another chance to shoot it was great.
First things first. I really like the look of this little camera. It’s a lovely little unit in a tasteful shade of champagne with gold accents. Do you remember when cool consumer goods came in champagne? Microwave ovens, amplifiers, tuners, er… that’s probably it.
The camera switches on when you open the clamshell which is useful. It protects the lens and is less fiddly than using a button and much more definite. A lot of its contemporaries from the early 2000s had clamshells like the classic Olympus Mju series, the Olympus AF Twins, one or two of the Pentax Espios and some Canon Sure Shots. I like cameras with clamshells, as I can be less precious about them and just drop them into a camera bag with other cameras or accessories or put one in a pocket without the cases they come with.
