I was a very busy chap in January and February. I shot a few rolls of film on our one day of snow and it was gone in 3 days. I took my time to develop and edit my film and get them right because using aperture priority with my Minolta X-700 and Olympus OM-10 rendered snow as middle grey. It was easy to do with Affinity Photo 2, I wanted them to be right as one roll was for a project I am involved with and I will talk about that nearer the time.
It was almost the end of February when I finally got out for a wander with my February roll of Kentmere 400 loaded into my Olympus OM101 and 35-70mm power focus lens. Our dear chum, Keith came to stay for a few days and he took me to Kirkby Lonsdale where I would shoot my 35mm and 120 medium format Frugal Films for February.
"Use a more reliable camera" he said. "It won't fail like my folder last year" he said.....
Guess what camera worked perfectly this month?
Baldy The Baldax.
I was supposed to be shooting my 35mm roll of Kentmere 400 but sadly my camera had other ideas. It decided at the start of our walk that it was going to fail on me. I was puzzled as it had been fine and I thought the batteries had died so I bought some from a shop in Kirkby Lonsdale, fitted them into my camera and.... nothing, nada, nil points! I put it back in my bag feeling gutted, but on the bright side I would be keeping my two formats on separate subjects. A couple of days later, the 29th February 2024 to be precise, I took another look at my Olympus OM101 to see what I could do to remedy it.
After a bit of faffing about and swearing at it in three languages, I got it to work. However, there was a strange crackling sound and the Power Focus was only working intermittently. A little reading up on the fault revealed it's terminal and, due to the lack of parts for these things, it is now a brick. However, my dear chum "Wellies" had told me of this problem when he gave me not one, but two OM101's and I fetched the other from the shelf where it had been sat waiting pateintly for it's moment to shine.
The last time I touched this camera was on the day that Wellies delivered the kit to me. It worked back then and it had been sat on my camera shelf with no batteries in and a body cap fitted instead of a lens. I took my freshly charged rechargeable batteries, fitted them into the camera, mounted my 35-70 power focus lens and crossed all my fingers and toes. I switched the power on.
The camera roared into life and tried to load a film, a normal event for this camera as it powers up without a film already loaded and being used. I had managed to retrieve my roll of Kentmere 400 from the broken one, the auto film rewind worked long enough to allow me to use it again having taken precisely three shots. I retrieved the leader with my trusty film retriever, the best film gadget ever! I loaded it into my second OM101 and closed the back.
The camera quite happily loaded my film, automatically advancing it to number one on the frame counter. I set it to full manual and took four shots with the lens cap on, the extra one just to be sure and I set about documenting what I was up to that day. I was scanning a film that I shot with a camera I am reviewing in a future blog.
I took a few shots of that process and gave myself a chance of decent exposures by using my brightest light to illuminate the scene, a £10 led I got from Amazon a while back. It's not the best light in the world, but it is handy to have for what I was doing and I fitted it to the cheapest ass ho tripod I have that also cost £10 from Amazon. I got my toys out and took some photos of various cameras in my collection positioned on a coffee table and soon had my roll of film finished. I breathed a sigh of relief.
I developed my roll of Kentmere 400 later that evening in HC-110 1+47 dilution E for 9 minutes at 20 celcius and soon had it hanging to dry in my bathroom. From the look of the film I could see I had some decent exposures and I breathed another sigh of relief. My year of 35mm wasn't a bust. I digitised my film the next day with my Nikon D700, Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro, Valoi 35mm film holder on my Pixl-Latr and A5 sized led light pad. I processed my RAW files with Affinity Photo 2.
Here's some favourites from my February roll of Kentmere 400 shot with my spare OM101 Power Focus and 35-70mm lens. It was an absolute 'mare this month and I was almost ready to chuck it in and just concentrate on medium format for the rest of the year. I'm glad I persevered and I got a few decent photos out of it without leaving the comfort of my living room. As always I have placed them and more in my Frugal Film Project 2024 35mm album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.
Frugal Film Project 2024 - 35mm February
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