A Little Action Today

 
F3HP, Fujifilm Neopan 100SS, Likely Nikkor 35/2 AI

Due to a slight change in my travel scheduling for this Thanksgiving Weekend, I got some time to get out and photowalk today. I ended up shooting 4 rolls of HP5+, bringing that emulsion to 141 total rolls and exceeding my former most used film (Tri-X 400, at 139 rolls). That also brings me to 24 rolls for the year, 2 off my initial goal of 1 roll every 2 weeks, or 26 rolls total. The next goal is 46 rolls, matching my 35mm usage in 2012.

This gave me a chance to work out the FG a little more, about half my shooting today was with the FG, I pretty much left the 28/3.5 on it and my 50/1.8 on either the N6000 or the EM. I was burning a roll on the N6000 so I could reload it with some colour film and after that was done pretty much stuck to using the FG & EM, swapping bodies as I wanted the lens mounted. It's just quicker to swap between two small bodies that to switch between two lenses on the same body and the EM makes a nice second body when shooting with the FG (and they take all the same accessories too, a nice bonus). I'm liking the FG, it actually reminds me of the X-700 a lot, just about every aspect of the X-700 that I really liked is duplicated in the FG. The only missing items are an AE-lock (and the FG has the 2-stop backlight button) and DoF preview (which I never used much). Kinda funny that the X-700 was the flasghip Minolta while the FG was a bargain-basement Nikon yet they are pretty much identical in capability.

Unfortunately, I also discovered today what has happened to film prices in the last 4-5 years. They've doubled for colour film, and gone up even more than that for B&W. I used to pay $56 for a 100' roll of Tri-X, it's $226 now. Per roll used to be $4 or so, now it's just over $12 (yep, the $5 in savings between 18 rolls of TX400 and a bulk roll make buying bulk pointless now). I guess it's too be expected as the non-serious film shooter has pretty much disappeared and they kept the prices low for the serious shooter. But on the good side, my local store, which used to be Fuji/Kodak/Ilford only, is now carrying at least two other options for B&W Film (Rollei/Agfa and Japan Camera Hunter) and is also selling imported Japanese Fuji stocks (Natura in particular). Cost is up, but so is selection again.