The old town of Sirmione features tight alleyways, lots of foot and occasional car traffic, and all-around historic buildings. You get a beautiful Roman Empire-ish feel walking from snicket to snicket.
The first images from four rolls of ReflxLab 250D (also known as Kodak Vision 3 250D) shot in Sirmione in, on and around the Castello.
This is the remainder of what was shot on Harman Phoenix 200 in Sirmione.
Castello di Sirmione is the central landmark in the old town of Sirmione and a great place to visit early in the morning before big crowds of tourists flood the place.
Sometimes one takes pictures expecting they won’t turn out great because, like in this post, the circumstances are stacked against the photographer. You take a look at the results and think to yourself “I knew it.”, and after browsing through the images again and again you get stuck every time you see them. There is something. Something that makes you not want to discard them despite their obvious imperfections. In the presented case, it was obvious that the waning light would pose a problem with holding the camera steady enough for sharp images. But Harman Phoenix 200 is already a grainy film. Does the bit of blur even matter? I like the composition, the colors. What more do I need?
Vacation in Italy, in the middle of summer, right at Lago di Garda. Camera in hand, wandering through the snickelway (an alley, according to dict.cc), taking pictures of whatever finds your fancy. Good times! A roll of Ektar finds its end after a long journey from Germany to the US, back to Germany and finally exposed to a sunny day in Italy. It survived abuse at many airports, security checkpoints in New York, and finally in the film processor. Scanned, cropped, converted, sifted through, cut down to eight frames, and finally on your screen for your viewing pleasure (or displeasure, whatever floats your boat). Thus, a purpose fulfilled.
I recently read somewhere that Munich is one of the most walkable cities in Europe. From personal experience, I can attest to that sentiment: There is much to see and enjoy around the central city area at the Marienplatz. While sunny weekends attract tourists and locals alike, bypassing crowded areas and basking in the town’s history is possible. All images from this post were taken on a single early afternoon stroll through Munich.
My first roll of Harman Phoenix 200 shot at ISO 125 in my Rollei 35 at the Königssee in Berchtesgaden. While Phoenix is officially rated at ISO 200 by Harman, I heard that it technically should be rated at ISO 125. So that is why I shot it at that sensitivity. Another thing I saw on the web is, that lab scanning yields a strong red color cast because the film base is transparent instead of the usual orange used to minimize halation. Scanning and conversion at home are supposed to not suffer from this issue. I can confirm that from my experience after developing, scanning, and converting four rolls of Harman Phoenix 200. The colors straight out of the default conversion with Negative Lab Pro look subdued but pleasant. The grain makes images look a little fuzzy, but fine details like the name of the boat in the first image are still resolved.
I had some space left on the last roll from my trip to the Königssee and a Leica Lemarit-R 135mm f/2.8 that wanted to get out for a test run. Thus, I grabbed the camera and went for a walk.
The second part from my trip to the Königssee.
