Southern France in Film

[Amp34]

I bought a Medium format TLR a few years ago but never got round to using it much, now however I'm playing with it again. I went to Nice for a long weekend a few weeks ago and took along 5 rolls of film (the 4-9th rolls of film I've ever shot...), all were then processed and scanned by Peak imaging.

Colour film was all Velvia 100 and B&W a mix of T-Max 100 and 400

We stayed in a small village called Sospel, with a hotel room overlooking the valley.

T-Max 400

T-Max 400

T-Max 400

Velvia 100 - I love slide film, 6x6cm of positive goodness, but it ends up with a yellow colour cast when scanned that seems very difficult to remove in a 1MB Jpeg...

Next, on to Saorge, a half deserted hill village between Sospel and Casterino in the Mercantour National Park, which is where we were heading before spotting it randomly.

Some graffiti on the way

T-Max 100

T-Max 100

T-Max 100

Finally we managed to leave Saorge, after half an hour to "have a quick look round" turned into a 4 hour marathon...

On the way to Casterino the cloud started to come in and daylight was starting to ebb away, the views, as usual in places like this were stunning.

T-Max 100

Once we got there we popped up a hill to take a couple of photos. The light never really got brilliant but the clouds made some nice B&W scenes

T-Max 100

T-Max 100

Next day, off we popped to another couple of hill towns before heading back to Nice to the airport.

Sainte Agnes was first. It's built on a large bluff overlooking the coast and the huge conurbation that is Nice-Monaco. Alongside that is an old ruined castle above it and a Maginot fort built in the 20s.

Next, Peille, another town built on the steep slopes of the area. It's also a major Via Ferrata area (climbing with pre-existing loops and rope).

T-Max 400

T-Max 400

T-Max 400

C&C welcome as always

 

[Amp34]

Lovely tones.

They are even better in the negative, just a shame the scanner can't capture it all. I'm going to buy my own and try and do some HDR style processing to get the full range in a digital image.

Stunning set! Love the location. It seems like a place stuck in the past

They really were, we didn't plan on going to them but stumbled across Saorge and decided to see a few more the next day. Saorge did seem to be the most deserted, with us and a few locals, that was it. Peille and St Agnes did seem to have a lot of work being done to them, I guess people are starting to move into them again.

 

[Amp34]

Great shots Been wanting a 120 for ages now.

It is pretty awesome, especially slide, a nice 6x6cm slide image is lovely. It does make me really want to get a panoramic camera though... The Fuji 617 is over £1k though.... But, just imagine 6x17cm of slide goodness!

Lovely set, you got to love film

P.S what TLR was it you used

Thanks. I'm using a Mamiya C220, basic TLR which is pretty cheap. In fact the 10 rolls of film I've shot cost more to buy and process than the camera. Film is expensive!

 

[Amp34]

It depends on the price. I used Calumet recently as they were cheap, also got some out of date film on a film, process and scan deal the other day. Even before scanning you're usually looking at about £1 a shot for 120 film, unless you process yourself of course. With scanning the price is silly which is why I'm trying to get a scanner to do that, alongside the fact I should be able to get more control over the process, rather than small Jpegs you can do little with. I used Peak for the developing of the photos above as they worked out cheapest.

 

[Amp34]

My Velvia 100 cost me £26 for 5 rolls, similar for the TMax (except the 400 which was given to me), processing cost me about £45 inc. scanning and Peak were the cheapest for those bits (AG would have cost more).

I got 5 rolls of OOD Provia and the developing, scan and print for £40 which is more reasonable but still not far off £1 a shot. On the other hand I had a 50% "keeper" rate so it's not that bad.