Tag: Italy

Digital

Back from Italy

fishyfisharcade2 Comments

I got back home yesterday after a few days away with my wife. We took a short trip to Lido di Jesolo, a beach resort in north-east Italy, that she had said she would like to visit. The resort is very much built for tourists – it’s mostly hotels and the restaurants, cafes, and shops that serve the visitors, but it’s clean, friendly, and a nice place to spend some time. It has a very long beach – over nine miles in length – which is equally clean (it has a Blue Flag rating) and with lots of public facilities such as cafes, bars, and showers. It also has thousands of sun-loungers and parasols, with many of the resort’s hotels having their own reserved section of the beach.

Before the flight
The plane we flew on to Italy – a Boeing 737-800 should you be interested.
Over the Alps
Flying over the Alps.
Venice descent
Making our descent into Venice Marco Polo Airport, with Venice visible in the centre of the Venetian lagoon.

The resort is also only a short distance from Venice, and it’s easy to catch a bus and a ferry to the historic city – a trip of approximately an hour from the bus station – meaning an abundance of culture and history is there should you wish to partake of it. We visited Venice on the second day of our trip, and here are a few pictures from the day out.

Piazza San Marco
Piazza San Marco, Venice
Rialto Bridge
Rialto Bridge, Venice
Somewhere in Venice
A canal scene, Venice

I’ll be posting a bunch of photos from the trip once I’ve got them processed and scanned, but in a break from tradition (given that this blog is advertised as being about film photography) I’ve dropped a few digital photos into today’s post. I don’t intend to start posting digital photographs on a regular basis, but I’ve decided that sometimes it might be apt. Because I often have a backlog of film pictures to develop, scan, and upload, it can often be many weeks before I get to post them. Using some digital pictures now and then will allow me to better illustrate the posts where I witter on about what I did that day with actual images from the events, rather than some random unrelated film photo I took weeks earlier.

Ricoh GR III.

Taken 5 and 6 May 2023.

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Goodbye OM-1. Hello OM-1N.

fishyfisharcade8 Comments

My Olympus OM-1 camera has suffered an annoying fault for a while now. After firing the shutter the mirror will sometimes lock up. Advancing the film drops it back down but the shutter remains locked and the only way to release it is to advance the film a second time (which shouldn’t be possible with the OM-1). When this second stroke of the advance lever takes place the camera also fires the shutter. After this it can be used normally again for the next shot. The problem means that every other shot is wasted – or mostly wasted as the problem tended to be intermittent.

Fot no real reason at all, I decided to look at the camera again today (without a film in it) and discovered that the issue now occurs on ever shot taken. I like the OM-1 – it was the first SLR I bough when I got back into shooting film cameras again – so I decided it would be worth trying to get it fixed. As the person who I’ve used for repairs and CLAs in the past has now retired, I tried a local repair shop that I’ve heard works on analogue cameras.

Upon phoning the shop, the guy there was quick to tell me that the repair would be costly and that I’d be better off using digital cameras. Rather than slam the phone down in disgust (:)) I explained that I enjoy the experience of using film cameras and that I’m not unaware of the issues that come with using vintage gear. He then mentioned that he’d had a box of stuff come into the workshop, including an OM-1 camera, which he would let me have for £40 sold-as-seen. £40 is a good price for an OM-1 these days so I headed over to the shop to take a look, figuring I could always turn it down if it looked like it might not be working properly. As it turned out, the camera appeared to be working as expected, including the meter, and was in great cosmetic condition so, after chatting with the guy for a while, I headed home with the camera – an OM-1N to replace the OM-1.

The camera probably needs new seals fitting, and it’s missing the hotshoe. I’d though that I could just swap over the hotshoe from my OM-1 (they just screw on and off with a thumbwheel), but it wouldn’t fit and it turns out that the design must have been slightly revised between models. Still, I’ve not once used the hotshoe on the OM-1, so I won’t miss it, and I’m more bothered by the empty screwhole on the top of the camera than any loss of functionality.

The other difference is that this replacement is expecting the original 1.3v mercury battery to power the meter accurately, whereas my OM-1 had been converted to meter properly using readily available 1.5v batteries. This means that I’ll either have to get it converted, or adapt zinc-air hearing aid batteries instead (I could use Wein cells, but these are much more expensive than the hearing aid cells). It’s a bit of a faff, but nothing insurmountable though.

I’ll get the seals replaces when I get the chance and then take it out for a test run.

Today’s picture is from back in 2018, when I took my original OM-1 with me on holiday to Sorrento, Italy.

FILM - American bar

Olympus OM-1,  Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 & Kodak Ektar.

Taken on 24 August 2018

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Via Marina Grande

fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

This is a photo I took in Sorrento, Italy back in August 2018. The image was on a roll of Ektar that had been left in my OM-1 and forgotten about. For various reasons I didn’t use the OM-1 for several months after the trip to Italy and I ony realised the film was still inside when I opened the camera back!

While a few frames were lost or suffered light leaks, most of the images were ok, including this one – a shot of Via Marina Grande, a narrow street that descends to the old marina.

FILM - The way to the old harbour

Olympus OM-1,  Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 & Kodak Ektar.

Taken on 24 August 2018

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Sorrento mixer

fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

Here’s a splash of colour to break up the black and white stuff. I’m currently in the process of re-scanning last year’s holiday photos with my newly acquired Plustek 35mm scanner. I was really disappointed with the original scans that I made on the V550 – no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the colours in the Ektar negatives to look right. They all has strange colour casts that I could never fix to my satisfaction.

I’m not sure if the Plustek and Silverfast are giving me accurate Ektar colours (I don’t have any lab scans to compare to), but they’re a quantum leap ahead of my earlier efforts and I’m really happy with them now.

FILM - Mixer

Olympus OM-1, Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 & Kodak Ektar.

Taken on 22 August 2018