I like to carry a compact film camera with me wherever I go, and so tend to keep one in my coat pocket at all time. This does mean that the habit tends to fall off somewhat in the warmer months when I don’t have a handy pocket, but through late autumn to early spring I’ve usually got a camera on me.
The camera of choice for quite a while now has been a Canon Sure Shot Telemax point-and-shoot compact, a camera that has the distinction of being the only film camera that I’ve owned since new. It was a gift from my parents nearly thirty years ago and sat unused in a drawer for the best part of two decades until I got back into shooting film a couple of years ago and I decided to see if it still worked. Despite the battery cover being held shut with tape, it whirred into life with a new battery, so I gave it a go. To say I was pleased with the results would be an understatement – while the camera is far from sophisticated, it produces very nice photographs indeed, and it’s been a constant companion for spur of the moment photo opportunities ever since.
Because of the nature of having it in my pocket much of the time, it means it’s with me even on occasions where I go out to shoot with a different camera, and it also means that it can take a while to finish a roll of film, leading to me forgetting what shots I’ve taken with it and getting an extra bit of anticipatory pleasure when getting the roll processed.
Which leads me to todays post. I finally finished a roll of HP5+ that has been in the camera since last October, and got it processed on Friday and then scanned today. I only got 33 shots for some reason – I vaguely remember perhaps mis-loading the camera and so lost a few frames that way – but happily a great deal of them are keepers (to my own standards, if not anyone else’s, at least).
This shot was taken on a foggy day when I went out with my DSLR last year, and I completely forgot taking any shots with the Telemax, so this was a nice surprise. It’s almost the same composition as a shot I took digitally, except this was handheld, and that was on a tripod. Despite the added detail in the digital version, I might be erring towards preferring the film shot.
Canon Sure Shot Telemax & Ilford HP5+.
Taken on 25 November 2018
