Hello everyone, sorry for the slow news recently, but I’m rather occupied at the moment and rarely find the time to work on my blog. Anyways, it’s time to resurrect a long-neglected column, The Film Chronicles!

Yes, I’ve finally acquired a film scanner (Epson Perfection V330, to be precise) and spent the last three evenings scanning two rolls of film I shot in the past months: one roll of Ilford HP5+, a very popular and reputable 400 ISO black-and-white film (which I started to shoot last summer and finished only this spring …), and a roll of Fujichrome Provia 100 that I shot during the past few weeks. For your enjoyment, here’s a sample of the scanned results! (Mostly family snaps, so if you don’t care for these, please skip this post :-))

Yashica Electro 35 GT + Ilford HP5+ 400

Yashica Electro 35 GT + Ilford HP5+ 400

Yashica Electro 35 GT + Ilford HP5+ 400

Yashica Electro 35 GT + Ilford HP5+ 400

Yashica Electro 35 GT + Ilford HP5+ 400

Yashica Electro 35 GT + Fujichrome Provia 100

Yashica Electro 35 GT + Fujichrome Provia 100 | Can you "spot" the balloons? ;-)

Yashica Electro 35 GT + Fujichrome Provia 100

Yashica Electro 35 GT + Fujichrome Provia 100

Yashica Electro 35 GT + Fujichrome Provia 100

Yashica Electro 35 GT + Fujichrome Provia 100

Yashica Electro 35 GT + Fujichrome Provia 100

Yashica Electro 35 GT + Fujichrome Provia 100

Fujichrome Provia 100 really is a wonderful emulsion! Very natural and accurate colour reproduction, great contrast and wonderfully subtle tonality. Even in bad light or underexposed, held against a strong light source the positives reveal that Provia has great potential. I’m currently shooting a roll of the discontinued Sensia, and I’m really curious to see how it compares to Provia.

As for HP5+, I wanted to try it out once as it has a good reputation, but I don’t think it’s going to be my favourite b&w emulsion. Also, I don’t know how much of the above images is actually the film itself, and how much is a mix of the rather mediocre performance of the scanner (which is totally acceptable considering the price tag) and my processing in Lightroom — the same goes for the Provia pix, of course.

Anyhow, it has been great fun scanning the two films, and even more fun shooting them. I actually prefer shooting film a lot over digital at the moment. For one, because different films show different characters, and I find it fascinating to explore these characters. The other reason is that digital easily gets arbitrary and random — you can shoot anything, in any quantity, and I noticed that I actually did that. I’ve got more than 700 unprocessed pictures in Lightroom at the moment. Shooting a roll of film in the course of one or a couple of week is much more satis- and gratifying. For me at least.

So expect more Film Chronicles in the future