800

Playing with Lomography's high speed emulsion.

My eldest son bought this roll as gift for me on Father’s Day 2025. It took until February of this year for me to finally liberate it from it’s frigid prison and load it into my Bronica. A visit to Danevale, a local big house with substantial gardens, seemed a good reason to start things off.

Each year they open their gates to the public for a day to see the most glorious carpets of snowdrops you can imagine. When we arrived, there were no other vehicles or people walking around, which seemed strange. Then it registered. Somehow we messed up the dates and rolled up in their beautiful place a day early. The hosts were, however, most kind and gracious, welcoming us to have a mooch around anyway. As it turned out we were very lucky with the weather, as it was a calm, bright day. Unfortunately, the following day, the actual open day, the weather was appalling. I felt sorry for them trying to run this charity event in such awful conditions.

I have mentioned before that my photographic output isn’t the most prodigious.

More views from Danevale

This roll went in with the snowdrops and didn’t come out of the camera again until the bluebells and poppies were in full swing, to say nothing of the beautiful canopy of fresh green leaves on the trees.

Bluebells, forget-me-nots and vibrant poppies. I was pushing my luck a little with these, using such a fast film in direct sunlight. The film seemed to cope, though, even if the colours ended up a little lurid, particularly the greens and yellows. The poppy shot had it's saturation dialled back slightly.

I always used to associate high speed colour films with slightly muted colours. Not so with Lomography 800 colour negative film. It has wonderfully vibrant hues that seem to get positively boisterous in brighter light and a little overexposure. It’s surprisingly sharp, too. All in all, a very attractive emulsion.

With this view, I cheated a little and used the auto colour correct in PSE6. It looks pretty much bang on with the original scene. Sadly, this is one of my last few photographs of the big beech in the foreground still with all it’s limbs. The one that sticks out on the left hand side now lies forlornly on the ground below. I heard the horrific cracking, tearing sound from indoors (we only live a few hundred yards down the lane) and rushed out to see what had happened. A sad day, indeed. The tree still seems healthy enough otherwise though, so will hopefully endure.

The images, here, were all colour balanced by eye on a frame-by-frame basis, as I have no presets or dedicated editing software for the purpose. I could, most likely, make life a little easier for myself by using something like Negative Lab Pro, but I seldom shoot colour negative film. Who knows, though, one day I might indulge.

*****

(All photos taken with my Bronica ETRSi and 40mm lens.)

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Thank you for joining me, once again, as we wandered through the snowdrops. If you would like to show your appreciation, please consider helping to plant a tree. All proceeds go to: