Lomography 800 - OM-1n - Merry Mersey Meet Up Photowalk

For the Merry Mersey Meet Up I wanted to take two cameras with me and shoot a roll of Lomography 800 colour film as a counterpoint to my effort with Kodak P3200 b&w film. I have been having a lot of fun with my Olympus cameras over the years and I shot my roll of Lomography 800 in my OM-1n fitted with my Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 lens. 

Stig had picked a weekend where there was going to be a lot of colour as the Liverpool Christmas Markets were starting for the festive period. Late November was always going to be lousy for anything slower than Lomography 800 colour film and I had one roll left in my stash. Nice!

As I mentioned in my previous blog about this most excellent photo walk with friends, we started at the Cenotaph outside St George's Hall in Liverpool. Straight away I was looking for colour compositions and having to choose my shots as there was way too much of it. This is one situation when you can tell a b&w film photographer is shooting colour film too. 

Man, the conflict of emotion between colour and texture is very real and I had it in abundance. Thankfully, Stig lived up to his Starr name and chose places along our route that catered for both colour and b&w. We visited murals, old buildings, modern buildings and a splendid café, Little Leaf for a spot of lunch. 

By the time we reached the Pier Head, I was running low on colour and could easily have shot two or three more rolls of colour film on the day. The Fun Fair was in full flow and we all managed a few photos as we made our way to the Royal Albert Dock. It was there where I finished my roll of Lomography 800 and had to break out my phone camera to get some more shots that deserved the full colour treatment to do them justice.
 
Did I tell you I have the attention span of a goldfish? This walk was a heck of a brain exercise and I did it to myself willingly. I don't know which was more knackered by the time I said my goodbyes and headed for home, my legs or my noggin. Tired as I was after a most excellent day with friends, it was well worth the effort. Thank you to the legend Steve "Stig" Starr for organising another excellent photo walk around Liverpool.

I sent my roll of Lomography 800 to Analogue Wonderland for developing at the end of January. Christmas gets expensive here, so I had to wait a bit. A few days later, I got the notification that my scans were ready to download and I got my first look at my photos.

I was a bit hit and miss with a lot of my photos, but I did get a few reasonable photos to share from the Merry Mersey Meet Up Photowalk. I underexposed quite a few and that's either the changeable light on the day or just me not getting it quite right. I was probably exposing for the highlights when I should have been exposing for the mid tones or shadows. It doesn't matter so much with digital as you can pick that back up in your editing software. Film is a little more tricky to nail when you're in full manual mode, especially when you haven't shot much colour film in late autumn - early winter. 

I can say the lesson that I learned from this roll of Lomography 800 is I probably should have used one of my Auto Focus cameras rather than my OM-1n. In my defence, when you are a self confessed Olympus Guy and have a freshly serviced OM-1n at your disposal, you would probably pick it too. This fast film would have been better used in My Nikon F801S or even my Canon EOS300 on the day to be honest. C'est la vie! 

Lomo 800 in 35mm seems to be a bit thin on the ground at the moment, which is a shame as it's a decent film. Even with my cack handedness I was able to get half a dozen decent shots and managed to clean up several more to make them presentable. I was pleased with the Mural photos as we walked through the city centre and the Funfair shots at the Pier Head were pretty reasonable too. The main thing was I had a fun day out.

After conquering my anxiety and now attending two Mersey Meet photo walks in winter, I really want to attend the spring Mersey Meet photo walk to take advantage of the longer daylight and not hold the group up. (It's me bad back, mate...) If you want to join us next time, keep and eye on the Photowalk.me website via the link below and sign up when Stig makes the announcement.

Here's a few of my favourite colour photographs shot on Lomography 800 with my Olympus OM-1n and Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 lens. As always I have placed them and more in an album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them. 

Photowalk.me 
Lomography 800 - OM-1n - Merry Mersey Meet Up Photowalk