When the archives are floating back

Browsing through my storage room ahead of my move to London, I went through my boxes of old pictures and binned most of the prints, but naively kept negatives, probably something like 20 to 30 rolls that were never scanned and spent most of the past twenty years in storage.

1993 Dereliction – Brussels

I really like browsing through old pictures because that’s why we take them in the first place right? Being able to watch them later. Most of the rolls were shot between 1992 and 2001, between my arrival in Brussels and my first digital camera.

What do you see when you look at old pictures? Well ok in this case what I saw first that the negatives, the Kodak Gold mostly, were pretty deteriorated and got yellow stains that wont go away.

1993 Chez Guillaume Villers sur Mer

Beyond this, with nearly 30 years of decantation, not many picture pass the bar of being shareable. I smiled at my old self, look thoughtfully at departed family members and lost friends. It is more walk down memory lane than an art exhibition. But a lot of pictures are frankly crap, and there are always lessons to take from this. The saddest thing is all those scenes which are not shot correctly and for which I only took one shot. Maybe an extra shot or a third and the memory would have been golden. My lesson here is to try to concentrate and if you can’t well at least try to multiply the chances.

1993 – Amsterdam style wedding

In 1993 I already bought my Nikon F3 with a 35-70F3.5 zoom, and offered my wife an Olympus mju-1, I think most of the shots here are done with the Olympus. 10 years before digital cameras hit the consumer market, I loved this point and shoot. When I arrived in Brussels my area of the city was quite derelicted and I was looking for a camera that would enable me to shoot pictures like the first one : abandoned houses viewed through a crack in a door or an opened window, showing the unseen, the essence of photography. Well ok, film was expensive back then so I did not overuse it…

1993 – Barcelona

Years before I learned the term street photography I was attracted to random stanger…

1993 – JF in Brussels

By then friends also had film cameras and there was no Facebook, so most of the time you never saw the pictures they took of you.

Hope you enjoyed this small reading, back form the time where film cameras where cameras, full stop.

More to follow…

Scanned with Epson v800, small correction in Lightroom

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Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur – India

Lake Palace Hotel

The famous Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur, as seen in James Bond’s Octopussy.

Highlights are blown on that one; well that was a very sunny day and the hotel is white; I could not really pull them out. Maybe shall I try to re-scan the film just to try to restore this part and merge different pictures to restore both highlights and the rest of the picture. I’ll have a try soon and post results here.

Camera: Hasselblad 500CM
Lens: 80mm F2.8
Film: Kodak Portra 400
Scanner: Epson v500+Lightroom 3

What’s in a walkaround camera?

Marina Bay Sands with flowers

So as promised, after the first, here is the scond film of the year. Sunday, the sky was a bit overcast but the weather overall nice. I was a bit ashamed of my low level of film photography since the beginning of the year, so I took advantage of the kind weather and go for a walk with a film camera.

I start by a look in the fridge to see which film there is, outdoor bit of sun let’s go for color, and the winner is a roll of Fuji Sensia 100 slides. Now let’s pick a camera; well I haven’t tried the 17-35mmF2.8 AFS on any film camera, so let’s try first with the Nikon F4s. It is not a light weight set-up as the combo weight about 3KG.

First problem, I haven’t used the F4 for so long (6 to 8 month maybe) that the batteries (6 x Duracell Alkaline AA) are flat and one had a small leak.) Lesson to remember: take the batteries off the camera before storing it back into the big Tupperware where it belongs. Fresh batteries in, turn the engine on: no luck. Remove the batteries clean the contact; iterate the operation 2 or 3 time and the beast finally turns on.

Now try to remember how to open the back and once done insert the film.

All set, ok not quite, I removed the Crumpler camo strap from the F4 to put it on the D700, so I have to grab the other plain Crumpler strap and put it on, carefully because I don’t want the damn thing to drop. I love the Crumpler straps, they feels good for a heavy combo, but it’s a pain to wrap around your wrists like we like to do from time to time.

First film of the year here we go 30 odd frames around the marina and a couple in Toa Payoh HDB.

Blast from the past – Pompei (Italy) 1976

Pompei - 1976

Not quite the other film I was talking about in my last post. Just got from my mum this picture from Pompei, back in 1976, quite a while back but a lot later after the eruption from mount Vesuvio who ruined the city.

This is my oldest picture so far, it was taken with this camera a Kodak Instamatic 56x, with film cartridges. This is the actual camera that traveled with me to Italy, Greece and Turkey that year, no longer working but still hanging around in the house, 10000 KM from where I used to stay at that time.

I was 10 by the way, you can do the math, but really it’s not worth it.

Oh and what about the “Other film”, well that will be for another time

Camera:Film Size: 126
Shutter: Single Speed 1/50
Lens: Fixed focus 43mm f/11
Dates: 1972-1977
Scanner: Scanned from print, HP flatbed scanner (Thanks Mum!)
Processing: PSP Elements 4.0 + Llightroom 3