Tag: Funchal

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Things in Funchal part i

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I’ve been wondering how to present the pictures I took in Madeira. There are quite a lot of them, but they’re mostly just of stuff that caught my eye (as is most of my photography, I think) and most of them perhaps don’t stand alone as subjects for individual posts.

So I think I’ll drop them in batches, with the odd few separated out where I have more to say about them, or because they’re distinctive enough to fly solo.

So here’s the first batch…

House across the street
Alas no ice cream
High above the scooters
Steps and door
Headless pink lady
Outside the Bank of Portugal

Nikon F70, Nikkor 28-80mm f.3.5-5.6 AF-D & Kodak Portra 160. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro

Taken 24 & 25 June 2026.

Photography · Film photography · 35mm

Curves

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This is a shot of the Savoy Palace hotel in Funchal, a large and distinctive building. It’s not where we stayed, but it was on the route into the centre of Funchal from our hotel and, as a result, I took at least a couple of pictures of it. I’ve not gotten around to processing and uploading the others yet though, so they’ll maybe turn up here on another day.

Curves

Nikon F70, Nikkor 28-80mm f.3.5-5.6 AF-D & Kodak Portra 160. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro

Taken 24 June 2026.

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Tuk-tuk

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Today marks the beginning of this year’s holiday pictures, this time from a trip to Madeira at the end of June, start of July (as usual, I’m gobsmacked that it’s already been over a month since we returned home!).

I shot five rolls of film while there, four colour, and one B&W using my Nikon F70 (the first time I’ve shot with this in aaages) plus my trusty travel companion, the Olympus Trip 35 and, while I doubt I’ll post them all, you might be seeing a lot of pictures from Madeira for a week or two…

For today though, just a single image of one of the tuk-tuks that provide city tours around the hilly city of Funchal.

Tuk tuk

Nikon F70, Nikkor 28-80mm f.3.5-5.6 AF-D & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro

Taken 24 June 2026.

Digital · Photography

Fortress of São João Baptista do Pico

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A few days into the Madeira trip, I took a walk from the hotel to an old fortress that I’d seen featured in an online tour guide. While only half a mile or so from the hotel “as the crow flies”, it was a somewhat more meandering hike “as the human walks” – and not just side to side, but also up and down as the fort was on the other side of a ridge from where we were staying. The final leg of the walk was particularly steep, proper thigh-master stuff.

Fortified
Out

Once at the fortress the views across Funchal and out south across the Atlantic were very nice. The fortress had scope for a bunch of pictures and I shot several on both film and digital (I’ll share the film pictures on a later date). In terms of other things to do, there wasn’t a great deal. There was a single open room containing paintings of the fort from various times in its history, plus a couple of small empty turret areas, but the rest of the structure was out of bounds. At first I thought I must’ve missed something but, upon asking an attendant, I was informed that more of the structure was planned to be opened at some future date. Perhaps I’ll get to revisit it one day and see the rest.

Stormlight
Prisoner's view

Ricoh GRIII

Taken on 26 June 2026

Digital · Photography

Hotel overlook

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No, not the one from The Shining!

This is a view overlooking the lawn area beside one of our hotel’s swimming pools (there were three – one indoor, and another outdoor pool on the same level from which I took this picture). The hotel was quite maze-like and it took almost until the end of our holiday to get a decent feel for how the different areas and levels all interconnected.

The white building in the picture is also part of the complex and housed one of the hotel’s a la carte restaurants on its ground floor (which is a floor below what you can see here!). The hotel reception is below the swimming pool.

This was shot on our first day at the hotel. We had a couple of days where it became quite overcast in the afternoon, although even on otherwise sunny days, the mountain tops would usually be lost to cloud come mid-afternoon.

Below a heavy sky

Ricoh GRIII

Taken on 22 June 2026

Digital · Photography

Back in the UK

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I’m home again after 11 days on the beautiful island of Madeira. I have loads of pictures to come from the trip (five rolls of film to get developed), plus a bunch of digital shots as well.

I’ll probably not get around to posting the film shots for a while as I still have a backlog of other stuff to post, but I’ll be dropping some of the digital pictures in over the coming week or so. As usual, it will be a mix of whatever caught my eye, such as this staircase in our hotel.

Going down

Ricoh GRIII

Taken on 22 June 2026