Analogue Adventures Part II

Image: Fuji X100 | ¹/55 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400 

I’m pretty sure I’ve found a camera that will most certainly help me drain my bank account due to film and processing costs. I picked up this Olympus XA at a local used camera sidewalk sale the other week. A tiny, durable little film camera with a 35mm f/2.8 F-Zuiko lens, aperture priority auto-exposure and manual focus using a small RF patch in the viewfinder. It’s smaller and lighter than my Nikon V1 (my smallest digital camera), so there’s always space in the camera bag for the little guy.

The XA really came in handy one morning when the batteries ran out on the digital camera I was carrying. I loaded a roll of Velvia 50 and used it as my only camera for the entire day, and wouldn’t you know, it was the most fun I’ve had shooting in a long time.

Image: iPhone 4s 

Image: iPhone 4s

The last time I shot Velvia I had the film cross-processed, which produced some funky results. This time I went with standard E6, and when I placed the processed strips of film over the light table at the lab (above), my jaw dropped. Not only are the colors amazing, but the camera itself performed beyond my expectations. The following scans do no justice to what I actually saw on that light table, but here’s most of my first roll of RVP50 from my new favorite film camera. It should be obvious from these frames that Suki really tries hard to never look at the camera:

You all know I’m partial to Suki, but I must say, this image I took outside my favorite coffee shop is my favorite frame from the roll:

Hah! Makes me laugh every time I look at it =)

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All images: Olympus XA | Velvia 50 | E6 Processing (unless otherwise noted)