APS Fun!

During her recent house move, my friend found some unused films in a drawer, and since she no longer has any film cameras, offered them to me. Except, these weren’t 35mm, they were APS.

As far as I can tell, it has been  almost a decade since anyone has manufactured APS, it is a dead format. Because of this, APS cameras are generally quite cheap, so I bought one just to shoot these three films. And the camera came with 2 films.

The advantages of APS: the cameras are generally quite small, as the film cartridges are small. Disadvantages? The films are small, so not much better than 110 film from a quality point of view. And it’s not easy getting the film developed, as not all labs have the facilities any more. I’m not sure why I’m bothering with this APS film, even. Each negative is only 56% of the size of a 35mm frame.  I think I just liked the look of some of the tiny cameras…

Anyway, here is my first film:

My first APS Film

As you can see, there are no photos on the film. I’m assuming that the camera is at fault, since it loads the film automatically (not user error!). Trying it without film, it seems to be that the shutter doesn’t even open, so that’ll be it, then. At least the lab refunded part of the cost, which was nice of them.

 

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My first film is back from Boots

St. Chad’s

I have my 2nd roll of film back, and this time it’s not blank.

The shots are just of things around the town, nothing special. The shots I lost on the blank roll would have been more interesting, I think, lots of flood water (which has now receded).  This is the first camera I have owned with controls for aperture, shutter speed and focus.  It also has a ‘bulb’ mode, where the shutter stays open for as long as the keep the release pressed down, ideal for night shots.

The shot above of St. Chad’s (a round church in the middle of Shrewsbury) was taken at 8PM, with a shutter time of about 3 seconds. Unfortunately, I hadn’t wound the film on enough, so I had a massive over-exposed strip on the left. I’ll learn.

A sculpture in the town centre

The camera I’m using is older than me, a Voigtlander Vitoret D.