Lomography 800 Colour Film

 Spring is always colourful as the earth wakes up from its winter slumber and flowers begin to bloom. It's not just the flowers, there are a few trees near my home that bloom quite early and give me a clue that the annual display of Cherry Blossom is about to arrive. I decided to keep an eye on the blossoming trees and loaded a roll of Lomography 800 into my Minolta X-700, fitted my MD 50mm f/1.7 lens and toddled off around my neighbourhood to see what was showing in early spring.

Magnolia always comes at around the same time as the Cherry trees begin to blossom along the main road, so I knew it was close to the time the riot of pink would appear. I took a few shots and continued on my way. I also managed a few shots of some early blossom as I walked to the shops, there was plenty of pink and white flowers making the most of the sunshine of this early spring day. It was a little early for the cherry blossom on the main road and I didn't take any more shots that day.

I had to go to the shop again a day or two later and soon soon caught sight of the yellow blooms across the road that heralded the daffodils were giving a fine display. I put my Hoya 28-105mm f/4 zoom lens on my X-700 so I could have the reach I needed to capture the flowers and blossoms I saw on my walk. Hoya may not be the sharpest or fastest lenses in my kit, but does the job when I need it to. I was using my camera manually and one thing I noticed about Lomo 800 was I needed to keep an eye on my shutter speed.

My X-700 has a fastest shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second and should I need any faster than that, it was going to give me problems. Thankfully my Hoya lens has a smallest aperture of F/22 which, although not the best aperture for keeping the colours in check, would certainly help me out. Using my X-700 in full manual on this day was a challenge and I just didn't quite get it right. I like to use manual settings on my cameras, but on this day I really should have gone with Program or Aperture priority mode. Definitely a lesson learned for another day.

It took me another day to finish my roll of Lomo 800. I was testing out a new lens I had bought for my Minolta Dynax and took the opportunity to finish off the film in my X-700. This time I made the right call by using Aperture priority. I had reasonable success at trying some close ups using my Vivitar 28mm f/2.8 with its close up focus capability. I soon finished my roll of Lomo 800 and it was promptly placed in my fridge to await developing.

It was a month later when I finally got around to developing it. I like to have a few colour films in the queue to make it worthwhile getting my Cinestill C41 chemicals out. They have a finite life and I want to get the most from it. When the appointed day arrived for my developing session I soon had my Lomography 800 developed, blixed and hanging to dry in my bathroom. I scanned my film with my trusty Ion Slides2PC 35mm scanner and processed the images with Affinity Photo 2.

Here are a few of my favourite images from my first experience of Lomo 800 colour film. It's a film I have heard a lot of hype about and now I was able to find out for myself, I quite like it. It was a challenge to shoot in bright sunshine and if I do choose to use it on a bright sunny day again, my Nikon F801s will be the camera it goes in. That camera has a fastest shutter speed of 1/4000th of a second, which is plenty enough to handle Lomo 800 in summer and matrix metering will certainly make a difference should I try it on manual settings again.

Having said that, I am happy with what I managed to achieve with Lomography 800 colour film and will be using it again at some point during the year ahead. I have placed these photos and more in an album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

Lomography 800 - Minolta X-700