‘Kosmonauts hit Wapping’ Photo Walk

Back in August I attended a photo walk in London organised by the London Camera Project and Kosmo Foto.

The plan for the day was to meet at CitizenM Tower of London Hotel where we would walk around the Tower of London area, then through Wapping, onto the Tower Bridge and Southwark.

What was also exciting about this photowalk was that everyone attending would receive a 35mm roll of Kosmo Foto film. There were also prizes and rewards arranged throughout the walk.

On this particular occasion, I didn’t have anybody to look after my dog, but I desperately wanted to attend this photo walk and thankfully the organisers were happy for me to bring her along.

My dog Daisy and I travelled up to London via the train from Brighton and I’m grateful that I have a pet who is very good at travelling and we have been to London together before on the train so I knew it wouldn’t be a problem. I’m also able to take her on the Underground which is great.

This is Daisy getting settled on the train on our journey up to london (photo taken on my iPhone):

When we arrived at the CitizenM Hotel a little earlier than the official meeting time, it was quite obvious to see who was there for the photo walk because they had camera’s with them. Since I had Daisy with me, I was unable to enter the Hotel, where a lot of people were waiting. However, this was an advantage too because I was able to chat and guide the people who were there for the walk who wasn’t sure where the group was.

Here is a lovely photo of Daisy taken outside the CitizenM Hotel by @lomo_keiko using her Lomo LCA Camera and Lomography 100 film:

© @lomo_keiko

Daisy is with me most of the time so I’ve developed a skill in taking photos whilst also holding her lead. This meant that she really wasn’t a problem on the walk.

Thankfully, she proved quite popular with the other photographers attending the walk and I think a few photos were taken by them of her.

I decided for this particular photo walk to take my Olympus Pen FT camera with me. Whilst I was tempted to take my Hasselblad 500 C/M, I knew the Olympus would be the most manageable camera to take photos whilst handling a dog at the same time.

Although we were handed a roll of the Kosmo Foto film, I still had a Cinestill B&W film in this camera from some other event where I took photos and didn’t manage to use up the whole of the film (since it’s 72 frames!) so thought it would be best to use it up on this walk. I also knew I wanted to take black and white photos.

Here are some of the photos from the walk:

Here is a photo of Daisy and I taken by @lomo_keiko using my Olympus Pen FT:

This photo was also taken by @lomo_keiko using her Lomo LCA camera and Kosmo Foto film:

© @lomo_keiko

As you may be able to tell, Daisy was quite keen to jump into that river and have a swim!

Lastly, here is a photo of Daisy taken by @ermess_ using his Leica M6 and Kosmo Foto film:

© @ermess_

Whilst on the photo walk, we stopped at a couple of pubs along the way and the final one we ended up at was a really nice bar called Hawkes Cidery & Taproom, where further film photography prizes were handed out. They also serve some lovely Pizza’s which I really enjoyed after all that walking!

Needless to say, I had a lot of fun on this photo walk and it was really nice to meet some new people, as well as catch up with some friends I’d made from previous photo walks.

Whilst I wouldn’t normally take Daisy with me on a photo walk, on this particular occasion, because everyone was very accepting of her, it was really nice to have her out with me and I know she loves to visit new places.

Using the Flash Shoe Accessory for My Olympus Pen FT

Several months ago I purchased a flash shoe accessory which was made specifically for the Olympus Pen FT.

When I initially fitted it onto the camera, I was really worried about it breaking the plastic around the viewfinder (there are many FT’s I’ve seen for sale with broken plastic on their viewfinders due to this particular accessory breaking them) so I was a bit reluctant to use it for a while….

Here is a close up of the viewfinder of the camera:

Here is a close up of the viewfinder with the flash shoe accessory attached:

However, the other week it was a miserable rainy day in Brighton and I desperately needed a photography fix! So I decided to carefully attach it to my camera and try it out at home by taking photos of my pets.

I had previously bought a Mirage 200 flash which I picked up for around £4 on eBay and it came with new batteries in it so that was a bonus! There was also the metal attachment with it in case I wanted to mount the camera on that instead of using the flash shoe accessory which means the flash sits to the side of the camera.

Here is the flash mounted on top of the camera:

I decided to use my 40mm 1:1.4 G.Zuiko Auto-S lens since I thought this would be good for portrait shots of my pets.

In my 35mm film stash, I had some Kodak Portra 160 colour film which, I decided to use for this project.

The Mirage 200 Flash provides an exposure table on the back of it which, suggested that I shoot at an aperture of f/16 if taking photos of around 1 metre (3 foot) away with a film ISO of 100, or it would be f/22 for ISO 200 film.

Since the lens I was using only goes up to f/16, I decided to shoot on that aperture.

I also had problems with the viewfinder being quite dark whilst shooting indoors so I really had to concentrate on getting the focusing right because it wasn’t very clear.

I ended up having to take photos of my pets over a couple of days since there was 72 shots to use up on the roll of film!

Once I got the film back, I was very pleased with the results! The film had exposed really well.

Here are a couple of photos of my dog, Daisy:

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Here is one of Daisy next to a cushion which I had printed up and made from a Polaroid photo I took of Brighton Bandstand:

Here are a couple of photos I took of my cats:

These final three photos of my cat, Mr Robinson, made me laugh. I can only think I perhaps wasn’t giving him any more treats for the day!

I would definitely use the lower ISO Portra film again for taking indoor photos as I really liked the colours.

Due to my fear of chipping the plastic viewfinder on the camera, I cannot see me using the flash attachment on a regular basis but it’s good to know I’ve got it for when I do need to take some indoor shots using this camera and I’ll just have to be extra careful when mounting the flash.

Olympus Pen FT Malfunction

Several weeks ago I decided to test out the Lomography Black and White Berlin 35mm film in my Olympus Pen FT Camera.

I headed to Brighton Palace Pier since I thought that would be a nice place to try out the film.

It was an extremely cold day and the shutter decided to jam several shots into the roll.

I felt like I had no choice but to remove this roll of film from the camera to see if I could identify the problem.

I’ve since put the film into my Pentax K1000 as I didn’t use much of it so hopefully I’ll still get some photos from this roll of film.

In the meantime once I removed the film from the Olympus Pen FT, the shutter still remained jammed so I immediately knew it wasn’t the film that had caused the shutter issue.

I didn’t want to force the shutter and make things worse and I don’t know enough about the mechanics of the camera to take it apart myself.

I knew if it could be repaired, I would want it done immediately upon quotation from the camera shop. I therefore saved some money together for a few weeks, preparing myself for the costs that would potentially be involved or even worse, if it couldn’t be repaired and I’d need to buy another one.

I decided to head to my local second hand camera shop, Clocktower Camera’s in Brighton who do repairs on vintage cameras.

After a quick inspection we found out that for some reason the lens had caused the shutter jam and with the removal of the lens, then placing it back onto the camera, it worked absolutely fine again.

I felt really stupid for not trying something so obvious myself as removing the lens before taking it to a camera repair shop but at the same time there was also a great sense of relief knowing that my camera still worked and that I didn’t have to pay out any money for repairs.

I wanted to blog about this in case any other Olympus Pen FT owners end up having the same problem with their shutter so my advice is, remove the lens and put it back on. Hopefully yours will then work again too!

Tokyo Camera Style Book

I discovered this book by John Sypal during one of my regular visits to Zoingimage in Brighton where they had the book for sale.

I was instantly drawn to the front cover and could tell it would be about film cameras. I also love Tokyo which I visited a couple of years ago as I have several friends who live there (one of them owns a really nice bar called the Ipcress Lounge).

I purchased the book and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. Apart from the introduction, the book is made up of pictures of vintage cameras that people had in Japan. The book also makes a note of the camera the person is holding which I found to be really helpful.

There are so many amazing cameras in this book from the Leica’s to the Nikons, Pentax etc.

As a newbie to film photography I really did enjoy looking at all the different cameras and learning what they were.

One of my favourite looking cameras in the book was the Olympus Pen FT camera.