It’s been a while since Fraser, @MM0EFI and I had a day out, and looking at options for this week, we settled on Mount Keen, GM/ES-014, and Friday’s weather looked best. The route from Glen Tanar is my favourite, which is about 10km of cycling and then climb to the top. For the past two months Fraser’s bike has been in my garage after Tim borrowed it, so I’d bring both bikes and meet at the car park.
A few banks of snow remained on the side of Mount Keen, right over the path up. Seeing each other at the start in trail snows we thought we had safety in numbers. We tried going around it but eventually had to just go up. A passerby ask if Fraser was carrying skis - no, it was just a yagi.
Inspired by Romain’s thread, I decided to dust off the TLR and load an expired (2024) roll of Kodak Gold 200. It was bright enough for sunny 16, but of course I complicated matters with a light meter app on my phone. So I’ll have to wait and see what comes back!
I’d love to see the results! I’ve found colour neg is usually good for plenty of time past its expiry date, especially if it’s been stored in a fridge. I’ve not yet been tempted to bring the Hasselblad out, but I’ve got a wee Olympus XA2 which wouldn’t add a huge amount of bulk to the bag.
It was kept in the garage, so not quite the cold, stable fridge temperature. It’s also not that old, seen plenty of success with people using 20/30 year old film!
The other issue is whether the shutter was working properly or not. I’d triggered it multiple times at home and it seemed fine but when out it didn’t quite have the same snap as before. Anyway, once it’s back from filmdev I’ll see!
That’s a nice camera, and ideal for quick shots without any faff.
I’ve had that trouble with leaf shutters in the past in cold conditions (below freezing), but hopefully it won’t have been that bad while you were out. If anything, you’ll usually just end up with a wee bit of overexposure with the shutter running slow, which generally isn’t a huge problem with neg film.
A pretty good day on the air - Michigan on 17m and 800 km to Belgium and 700km to Denmark on 2m FM!
Holy smokes! We (MOX and I) were trying to catch you on FM down in Edinburgh but even with advanced yagi wrangling we could only catch faint snippets here and there.
This report and Alex’s snaps inspired me to go find my tub of vintage cameras tonight. Christ knows if they still work, I’ve not found all of them yet. Found 6 of them plus two Super 8 cameras and some NOS Agfa Super 8 film that expired in 1974.
Can’t find my Zorki, 1911 Kodak Vesta Pocket (bellows needs repair though) and a few others.
Found a tub full of Ilford SFX, 200, Kodak, Agfa and a few packs of Kodak 110 Disc film as well. The Ilford SFX expired in 2016, I think I bought it new around 2013 and it was €6 on the price sticker. Double the price now!
I managed to purge all my film cameras except for the TLR and a Leica M2. The M2 probably weighs twice that of the TLR, and the viewfinder is tiny in comparison, but it is more “practical”. I’m an impatient digital camera user and I know I’ll use up 12 exposures of 120.
I can/have developed 35mm B&W at home - which is fun and sometimes disastrous - but don’t think I have a developing tub for 120…yet! Although then I need some scanning method to get them onto the computer…next thing you know you’ve spent £500 to go through a very convoluted process to have digital analogue images.
I did wonder about asking someone else who was at the summit to take a photo of both of us with it. Especially after Fraser took a group shot of them. They had actually all gone by the time I was off the radio and doing photography.
At a family wedding a few years ago, I took the M2 with some rolls of portra 400 (it was a special occasion after all) and was doing a group shot. Someone said they’d take it and I could be in the photo. I said just stand here and press this, having focused it already. However, just before they took the shot, they took a step back (probably thinking they couldn’t see everyone in the shot through the viewfinder) and of course it was then out of focus - it was indoors, low light and I was using the 35mm f/1.4 (Voigtlander not summilux ), at f/1.4.
I went down this road years ago and got rid of all my developing tanks, bags and so on. Nice to DIY your prints but tubs of chemicals and mini people knocking about the gaf never the twain shall meet and all that.
There’s a rake of snapshops in Dublin that can send off your reels. Or some online I think that can process the weirder formats and film types. Not cheap, and you’ve to wait, granted. Better than sinking a monkey or more in to kit that’ll be rarely used though.
Glad I held on to the cameras. Found a beaut i forgot I had and some film for it and other stuff. Hopefully it still works and I will take it out for POTA and SOTA.
Looking forward to seeing how your snaps turned out Alex!
Thanks for the wonderful report from faraway Scotland. It’s exciting to read, and the two of you make a great team – both as travelers and as radio operators.
You always manage to turn even seemingly ordinary situations out on the hills into a great experience. At least that’s how it comes across to us on our screens through your reports! And when there are also great radio connections all the way to the mainland, that’s the icing on the cake.
I wish you many more wonderful experiences with Summits on the Air – enjoy!
I have a feeling I might still have my mum’s old Disc camera kicking about in a similar box full of misc old camera bits. I’ll have a rummage if you want to have a go at shooting the film!
If you’ve got a Paterson tank, you can usually adjust the spirals to do both, you just need to put 500ml of juice into the tub for 120 instead of 300ml for 35mm.
At the moment, one of the better ways to digitise film is just to photograph it on a digital camera with a good sharp macro lens. We had a couple of Hasselblad X1 film scanners at work, but sadly these are now out of production, unsupported, and spare parts becoming very hard to come by. Since we can’t really get a direct replacement, the next best thing we’ve been using are Sony A7 RV cameras with decent 90mm macro lenses on copy stands with wee LED lightboxes. If you’ve already got a decent DSLR/Mirrorless camera, there are plenty of cheap but sharp macro/enlarger lenses which are perfect for this kind of thing.
They have a colour temperature and saturation that makes me think they were taken in the 70s.
I’ll put my pseud’s photography hat on and say there is something special about the photo of Fraser with the 857. Candid pose, sharpness, depth of field, suitable ‘stuff’ in the background, colours and saturation. It’s a quality photo. Maybe there’s some dichotomy in it in that again it looks to be from the 70s from colour/saturation but there’s a modern lump of tech in the shot (the 857). I’d be pleased to have taken that photo irrespective of film or digital and camera type.
£8 for development and scanning, £2 to have the negatives posted back to me, and £3.xx to post the film to them. Annoyingly film (120 and 35mm) are just slightly too deep to reliably go as Royal Mail Large Letter - which would then only cost £1.xx. Think I’ve chanced it in the past but if it gets caught out then you pay more. Of course posting multiple films saves money per one, but I wanted to see these and unlikely to take any more film photos anytime soon (although this has me thinking about it again).
Definitely my favourite too. Whilst it’s not as fancy as a f/2.8 rollei, the f/3.5 still gives good separation. The film is Kodak Gold 200, I like it for its price to performance ratio. Think it first appeared in the 80s, so certainly colours of yesteryear. Medium format version only recently came out and I think this roll was from me buying a few when it did. The gloriously bright sunny day helps bring out the colours.
), at f/1.4.
on 2m SSB and then to work 
, 🇩🇰 & 
on 2m FM. But, that’s radio. Always full of surprises.