The first day with a decent amount of snow at the end of 2023. I took the new-to-me Nikon F2 out for a second test run to finally finish the roll of Kodak Double X. I love the look of pristine snow surfaces and stumbling my way through knee-deep blankets of snow. A blissfully, sunny day.
The last set of images from the autumn walk around Lake Alpsee. This time I scanned them with the Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 instead of the Howtek D4500. Scanning with the Nikon scanner was the first thing that I did, but I quickly noticed that the sprocket holes on the negatives suffer from halation when scanned that way. Thus, you can see some orange cast toward the edges of the images.
Another set of frames from a walk around the Alpsee. As the frames progress, so does the weather. The cover image is rainy, while the third image is covered in a thin blanket of snow. In the end, it is raining again. I developed the motion picture film in C41 chemicals (as opposed to the recommended ECN2 process) and scanned the images on my Howtek D4500 drum scanner.
Some frames from a walk around the Alpsee at the end of 2023 right around the time it started to transition from rain to snow. The tungsten-balanced film and its blue tint work nicely with the foggy and rainy weather. I developed the motion picture film in C41 chemicals (as opposed to the recommended ECN2 process) and scanned the images on my Howtek D4500 drum scanner. This was the first time I got the development correct and I was delighted when I got the scanned results from the drum scanner. The images turned out better than I expected.
These are images from one roll of Kodak Ektar 100 and two rolls of Kodak Portra 160, taken on a trip to Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich. With the 6 cm by 9 cm image size that I get out of the Mamiya Press Super 23, the 100mm lens is far from a zoom lens, roughly around a 43mm lens on 35mm film cameras. It’s not ideal for subjects a bit further away, as they usually tend to be in a zoo. The relatively slow f/2.8 with 100 to 160 ISO film made it hard to get a decent picture of a tiger that paced along the edge of his little island. All I got was a tiger-shaped orange blob.
These are images from one roll of Kodak Ektar 100 and two rolls of Kodak Portra 160, taken on a trip to the Partnachklamm near Garmisch-Partenkirchen during winter time one year ago.
The second roll from exploring the Olympiapark in Munich (first roll see here). Sometimes it is really hard to cull the images from one roll down to the target of 5 frames. Given that this is my blog, I am free to bend the rules as much as I want. So here are 7 frames that I really liked from that trip.
Winter, about a year ago. I spent some time exploring the Olympiapark in Munich, as I had not done so all the time I have been living “nearby”. At least not as thoroughly as on this walk. A few days before, I had picked up a Leica Summicron-R 90mm lens that had been converted to Nikon F mount. Thus, I took the opportunity to give it a run for its money. My Film fridge still had a couple of rolls of expired (but still quite usable) Kodak Portra 160 NC (neutral color, I guess) in it, ideal to be used as test rolls. This is the first of two rolls from that walk, and I am quite happy with the overall results. There were enough decent shots that I could take the opportunity and pick some that have a similar color palette.
Images from a short visit to the town of Tuzing at Lake Starnberg. I brought the then new to me Pentax 67 with the first lens I got for it, the excellent SMC Takumar 105mm f/2.4, and two rolls of Kodak Potra 160. All pictures have been taken on a walk along the lake shore.
I like hiking, but physical fitness is not my strong suit. So what could be a better testing ground for the freshly acquired Schneider Kreuznach Cinelux Ultra lens adapted to my Pentax 67 than hiking in the Alps? With this massive piece of kit, “A photo studio!” would have been a much more reasonable answer. Nonetheless, I wanted to combine its trial run with doing something good for my health. Thus, up the mountain, I go! Taking the cable car to the middle station, walking around for a couple of meters, collapsing exhausted on a nearby bench, and then getting back to the middle station to take the cable car for the remaining bit up the mountain, to be precise. At least I got a bit of sun and fresh air, some minor exercise, and filled 4 rolls of film—two rolls of Kodak Ektar 100 and two rolls of Kodak Portra 160. The lens tends to flare a bit when taking pictures in the general direction of the sun and there is some vignetting with the lens hood on, and there have been some other oddities visible in some images that I am not sure how to explain. So instead of going with 5 frames from one roll, I am going with 9 frames from 4 rolls. Enjoy!
