We photographers are a spoiled lot these days.  We don’t have to worry about having enough film, or getting everything perfectly setup for the shot, or a million other things that our film predecessors had to.  Have we lost some of the magic of photography in the digital age?   Perhaps so.  And for this reason alone I occasionally shoot in good old fashioned 35mm.   My camera of choice?  The Rollei 35 T.

A bit of history on my particular model:  My parents found it in a bar in Italy in the late 1970’s.  Since it had been sitting there for awile, the bar’s owner let my folks keep it.  So they did.   To my knowledge, my folks didn’t use this much since then.  It is a rather intimidating piece of kit if you’re new to photography (just have a look at those dials below if you don’t believe me).   The camera moved from place to place with us, eventually ending up in the US.   I started getting more serious about photography around my last year of Uni.  After buying my first DSLR (2008), graduating and moving into my own place (circa 2009), I “appropriated” the Rollei and started to learn the “old ways” of photography.   In 2011, it moved with me to Singapore.  Back where it all began, who’d have ever thought it.

 

 

The first 3 rolls shot were all black and white CN400BW Kodak film.  Due chiefly to my incompetence with film, most of the shots were either wrongly exposed or the frame was loaded incorrectly and didn’t line up properly.  Did I mention this wasn’t an easy camera to work with?   But the shots I did mange to get were something special.  Even the technically bad (like the one of the blurred dog below) I simply loved.

 

First through third rolls samples.  Kodak CN400BW Black and White film.  Circa 2009-2010

 

Setting the shutter time too high achieved this odd “paint brush” effect.  Probably my favourite of the set. 

 

Ardmore train station in Lower Merion, PA.  

 

Coco in the back yard.  This shot was underexposed and I had to correct a bit with Lightroom to bring it back. 

 

The waterfall in my family’s back yard pond.  The wrong shutter time again, but I like it regardless. 

 

The late Teo, the same dog from the first “Paint Brushed” photo.  

 

A rare example of getting all the setting mostly right.  

 

Fourth Roll Samples.  Kodak CN400BW Black and White film.  Circa 2011-2012

These shots were taken after I moved to Singapore.  The film broke in camera and it took me 3 years to find a local shop that could extract and develop.  That and just my bone idleness.

No shots were issue free, most were non-usable.  But I’ll share anyways.

 

A street in the Siglap area of Singapore.  The wrong time value was set, yet this is still interesting to my eye. 

 

The ghostly rendition of  a man and his dog at East Coast Park.   This is one of the frames that was damaged by light exposure when trying to recover the film. 

 

Fifth roll samples: Colour Kodak 400 Film:  February 2015

Short of some miss-focused shots, all photos from this roll actually came out, if not overexposed (user error no doubt).

 

There we have it.  The Rollei 35 T.  It’s a pain in the ass most times, but so much fun to use in my opinion.