Auckland in Analogue
Over the years I’ve been finding myself editing some photos to look like what I think they would look like in film. After all this time, I finally decided to actually just shoot film! Well, I did from last year, it’s just that I’m that so behind with going through my backlog that I’m only updating now 😅
Luckily I managed to snag some film cameras relatively cheaply (at the time, they’re getting more expensive now) to see if I can get the hang of it.
As I was on the way to Auckland for work last year, I figured I’d take my “new” gear for a spin on my downtime. I’ve already done a test run with them beforehand to make sure they were actually working properly - which I’ll write about next time - so this trip was more to get used to shooting film. And spoiler alert: there’s gonna be quite a few shots of the Sky Tower. Case in point, the view from my hotel:
I did a quick walk around the viaduct in the late afternoon, so it was getting quite a bit dark for 200 ISO film. That meant I had to underexpose a bit in-camera to keep the shutter speed high enough to avoid camera shake. Pushing exposure up during editing does bring up noise in the shadows, but hey, that’s part of the charm of film I suppose! The noise isn’t as unpleasant as on digital, at least not to me.
On the weekend I thought I would go on a short boat trip run by the Auckland Maritime Museum. It was a quick trip out past the Harbour Bridge then back to the port.
It wasn’t the sunniest of days, on the other hand the means I didn’t have to contend with hard lighting too early on in my foray into film.
In the next shot I forgot to crop out the (white) edges of the frame before exporting. Oops. But at least I’m happy with the fact that I think I’m getting better at framing what I want correctly in-camera rather than finding the right composition during editing.
Incidentally, there was some bungee jumping happening while we were out on the water. The longest lens I have is a 100mm one so I couldn’t really get a tighter shot, but I am pleased with how I managed to frame it within the net.
Coming up to the Harbour Bridge I wanted to get a photo with both the bridge and Sky Tower together. I can’t quite decide whether I like it better in portrait:
…or in landscape:
After the boat ride I had a quick walk around the Maritime Museum. I didn’t realise they had the actual Black Magic on display!
One thing I’m happy about is not having too many photos to go through at the end of the trip, but I’m still getting to grips with the potential FOMO of not having enough. Oh well. Having limited shots doesn’t seem to prevent me from taking my favourite genre of ‘Tourists taking photos’ though!
Also now I think about it, that joke doesn’t land as well as I thought since I haven’t mentioned the ‘Tourists taking photos’ thing yet - that goes hand in hand with my time in Europe. And obviously I have yet to finish going through those photos, hence none being posted here yet. The sheer volume of photos I took on that trip is probably the biggest reason I started dabbling in film 😅
But anyway, definitely first world problems so I should stop complaining!
As always, thanks for your time.
