Adox Color Implosion

for the past 3-4 years, i haven't been picking up new rolls of film as much as i used to back in my heyday of film photography. the most i've purchased in said number of years were a roll of the LomoChrome Purple XR and a roll of CineStill 800 - of which i've yet to expose. a very spontaneous purchase of the Adox Color Implosion film was the result of a few random shots discovered on Flickr, which led me to ebay and ultimately punching the purchase button for not one, but three rolls! i was mostly attracted to the warm yellow hue that reeks of film nostalgia, but little did i expect that this was one tough film to crack.

most users recommend over-exposing the film to obtain the desired warm colour cast characteristic of the Adox Color Implosion film. out of the two rolls i shot, only one frame came out with the yellow colour cast - the rest features a gloomy and dull blue tint that were incredibly underexposed for some reason. i was mostly baffled and disappointed after viewing the scans, initially. had i not metered the shots properly? did i not adjust the ISO setting appropriately? weren't the scenes in London and Paris generally bright and contrasty (to a fault)? or was my Canon AE-1 finally giving up the ghost? considering the last time i shot with it and came away with a mixed bag of results, i was inclined to believe that the AE-1 was running on fumes. it'll probably take a fresh roll of film to confirm the camera's shutter accuracy, but for now i'd like to believe that the AE-1 is still functioning, albeit not being used as frequently as i would like. even then, i still love my cameras to bits, despite how they're not always the easiest (and cheapest!) to use lately.

after weeks of denial, i've come to terms with the results of my usage of the Adox Color Implosion films - i need to experiment with my final roll. while the present resulting images lack the yellow tint i sought after, one could argue that the blue tint served some of the photographs well enough - particularly the shots of Hyde Park and London in general. it does convey a sombre and gloomy mood (like how most Londoners like to describe themselves as). the photographs from Paris fared a little bit better, although the subject matters are nothing to shout about as i wasn't in the best of mind frames to be taking photographs at that time (a story for another day, perhaps). what i could salvage, i'm rather happy with. it's a shame, because film photography isn't getting any cheaper, and my batting average has significantly dropped over the years. perhaps it's time to rekindle my affair with film photography, maybe challenge myself and hopefully resharpen my skills along the way. perhaps.

Canon AE-1

Adox Colot Implosion

MONO Played KL Performing Arts Center, KL

if there is one band i can trust to consistently tour this region that isn't a dadrock band, it is MONO. for the past 10 years, they have toured Kuala Lumpur at least four times. their first show i ever attended was held in the abysmal Zouk club where the sound system simply wasn't suited for MONO's dynamic sound palette. needless to say, it was a disappointing show mostly because the venue was shite to begin with. their next show i attended was in KLPac - which was a significant step up from their Zouk show because the sound for the most part had a better dynamic range. plus, the band employed a string quartet to accompany them for a number of songs, adding more variety to their setlist for that stop in their tour. it certainly was a better show, coming off the release of their latest LP, the magnificent "Hymn to the Immortal Wind" which they had been promoting in that tour. the fan favourites came pouring out, and i for one couldn't be happier with the overall show. the band had toured this region another time to support their "For My Parents" LP some four or five years ago, though i wasn't around to attend their show at the Bentley Auditorium.

fast forward to 2017, and the band makes their way once more to KLPac - playing a setlist that sounds very much like a greatest hits show. the band opened with "Ashes in the Snow" and immediately segued into "Death in Reverse", a cut from their latest LP, "Requiem for Hell". the entire show was a nice balance of MONO's ferocious tracks ("Requiem for Hell", "Recoil, Ignite"), and also their more sentimental tracks ("Pure As Snow (Trails of the Winter Storm)", "Dream Odyssey"). glaringly missing are the band's older works prior to "Hymn...", including the fan favourite "Yearning" from their "You Are There" LP. setlist aside, Pentas 1 has proven to be the comfiest venue i've ever attended a gig in. second front row with numbered seats may sound rather un-rock, but for MONO's brand of music, there's no better way than to partake in the music other than being seating, closing your eyes, and letting the feedback carry you through the setlist. my previous gripes with subpar sound system are finally quashed, as Pentas 1's dynamic sound system was certainly capable of differentiating even the most hushed of guitar pluckings. or maybe its because my ears are not trained directly in front of a wall of speakers like in their previous shows? the band bookended their show with another cut from "Hymn...", the lovely "Everlasting Light" which if i recall correctly was  also played to close their last show in KLPac.

while the entire show lasted a mere one and a half hours, the voyage through MONO's latter day body of work was satisfying as the band played all my favourite tracks from their respective LPs. even the meandering title track from "Requiem for Hell" was hard-hitting and delivered with great fervour. i admit that MONO's output this past few years have been somewhat lackluster, but for a band that soundtracked a great deal of my undergraduate college years, they will always have a special place in my music library. here's hoping the band will continue to make music and tour the South East Asian region again.

31 days of Christmas

continuing my somewhat yearly tradition of taking a December-themed photo set, last month saw me brandishing two rolls of expired Kodak Plus X-Pan 125 black and white films in an attempt to photograph the 31 days of December in the year 2016. the attempt wasn't that big of a deal - mostly exercising my patience and diligence in taking on average two photographs a day. the hard work, however, did not pay off. out of the 75 odd shots, i reckon only 7 or 8 shots are exposed properly. this is hardly surprising, given the expired nature of the two rolls. it does break my heart though, that the time, effort, and money spent to take the photographs and getting them developed is completely flushed down the tubes. it is the sad inevitability of playing with expired films. in hindsight, had i known the photos would turn out this ghastly, i'd have experimented with push/pull developing those films. alas, what's exposed and developed is history. i cannot pin it entirely on problems with the camera's light meter. on the contrary, with years of exposure to photography, the red lights should have been apparent to me when the camera tells me to shoot with a shutter speed of 1/60 with an F-stop setting at F/2.8 in a dimly lit room! on ISO125 for that matter! in fact, the last time i used the Canon AE-1, the photographs turned out rather decently for an expired colour film. i doubt that it is the camera's fault, but these X-Pan films did expire sometime in the early 2000's (or was it the late 90's?).

a harsh lesson learned. enough with the expired films in my dry cabinet. the next time i am hit by a wave of film nostalgia, i either toss out RM30 for a fresh roll of film, or weather out the storm and return to my trusted full frame DSLR. but in all honesty, sometimes a little flushing of film nostalgia out of my system is healthy for the photography enthusiast in me. it does help me take my camera out with me everywhere i go - if i ever go out, even. i don't blame the films. the risks were there, i just decided to take my chances and hope that i get some good pictures. next time, we'll take the road well traversed.

Canon AE-1

Kodak Plus X-Pan 125 (Expired)

Finishing Off My Last Few Rolls of Expired Film

there was a time when i could plough through a roll of film in a single day taking pictures of everything and anything in a so called self-discovery of sorts. inspired by the likes of Patrick Tsai's Talking Barnacles, back then the endeavour was clearly not impossible when a roll of fresh film cost less than RM10. it is indeed disappointing that a roll of Fujifilm Superia 200 now costs nearly three times what it used to be. granted, the circumstances surrounding the film photography industry and the shitty economy ensures that every shot now counts - a mental conditioning that makes it rather difficult for yours truly to completely expose a paltry 24 exposure roll over the span of a weekend. nonetheless, i am making some modicum of effort to finish exposing these expired rolls of film i vowed to expose many years ago. this is certainly some form of insanity - saying the same thing over and over again expecting different results. perhaps it is now time to act on this insanity.

Canon AE-1

Fujifilm Superia 200 (Expired)

Look UP

Superheadz UWS

Kodak Zoom 800 (Expired)

My Last Instagram Photo

for the past few months i struggled with what i wanted to say on Instagram. did i want to continue making my stream exclusively for cellphone photographs, or did i want to start posting more of my film and DSLR photos? putting up old photos from the Contax T2 and giving them hundreds of tags ultimately felt pointless and hollow, just like all the likes from followback hungry Instaphotogs. perhaps i am in a photography funk, blaming all my inactivity on a platform that is supposed to inspire. but still, my problems with Instagram still lie in its "too perfect" calculated sheen too prevalent in social media - only a hundred times amplified here on Instagram. something about the meticulousness of the content feels cold and mechanical. the photos are nice and all, but i still cannot come to terms as to how most of these Instaphotogs get such perfect lighting all the time!

600 photographs into my photostream, and i feel like i've lost the steam to try and impress myself with all the likes and notifications. the whole point of it is lost, and becomes nothing but hollow gratification. perhaps it's time to focus my creative output elsewhere and leave this medium behind. maybe now is the time to take more photographs and slow down with all the sharing. after all, i imagine a photo one puts up on Instagram gets an average of 2.5 seconds of viewing before the user scrolls down to the next photograph of somebody's flat laid lunch. goodbye, Instagram. i will try not to miss all the photostreams of the cute girls i follow.

One Year

one year apart from each other's graduation ceremonies. amazing how time passes so quickly.

Helios 40-2 1.5/85

i took the plunge, and am now a proud owner of a Helios 40-2 1.5/85 lens. this particular unit already had a Canon EF mount attached to it, which saves me the trouble of picking up another M42 to EF mount converter. this is surprisingly a mammoth of a lens, weighing nearly one kilo. this gives the lens a solid feel to its build, though i imagine it'll be a challenge to shoot on the go. as one would imagine, it is a manual focus lens that requires a little bit of patience and luck to nail the perfect shot. i admit i haven't had the proper chance to field test the lens, but so far i'm rather pleased by the results. shooting wide open gives a softness to the photographs, and closing down several stops, the photographs come out surprisingly sharp like the Helios 44-2. not pin sharp, but sharper than what i expect from a lens of this reputation.

though this isn't my first time playing around with an 85mm lens, it is nice to actually own one. it gives me more to play with, granted i don't break my back or neck lugging this beast around. here's hoping a field test happens soon enough.

Fujifilm Simple Ace Disposable Camera

the best thing about disposable cameras is how one only needs to consider one thing before taking a photograph - is well lit enough that i don't need to use the flash? the practicality of such cameras is made all the more rewarding by the fact that the pictures come out better than i had expected. perhaps this is due to my usage of expired films for past five or so rolls that i had forgotten how freshly made films turn out. where there is colour, the colours are saturated beautifully. pictures come out sharp despite the plastic lens, unlike the lomography line of cameras. and for an ISO400 film, the grain is hardly noticeable. had i known that these make for great photographs, i'd have picked up some more in my last trip to Tokyo. at less than 1000yen a pop, it's a great novelty camera. it's too bad they go for triple the price on ebay. i won't be holding my breath for those.

Fujifilm Simple Ace Disposable Camera

LomoChrome Purple XR

some months ago in a foreign city, i stumbled upon a film cooler selling a plethora of freshly produced film. as i had been out of the analog photography game for the longest of time, most of the selections didn't interest me too much until i saw boxes of Lomography's LomoChrome Purple XR in 35mm. at 1500yen a pop, i hesitated a little bit before making my purchase. however, having recalled how the LomoChrome Purple XR pretty much emulates the feel of the Kodak Aerochrome, i bid adieu to 1500yen and brought a roll of the LomoChrome Purple XR home with me.

the biggest challenge for yours truly was to find subjects worthy of such a pricey roll of film. to get the best out of the film's potential was to photograph greenery, of which might be plenty about here in Kuala Lumpur south, however i had already photographed said places to death in my various photo walks in the past. same subjects be damned, but the purple experimentation meant a different take on the same subject, which i conceded at the end of the day. and drove around i did - with lengthy gaps in between when the mood strikes yours truly right. in total, it took eight months to fully expose the film, which surprisingly wasn't the longest gap between procuring said film and developing it (the award goes to the as-of-yet unexposed expired ISO800 rolls i procured way back in 2010-2011).

lengthy digressions aside, the LomoChrome Purple XR works phenomenally well when exposed properly. having played with various ISO settings ranging from ISO50-400, the results varied from properly exposed to mostly being underexposed. i suspect the underexposure in some of the shots were due to incorrect metering. the underexposure darkens the details to the point of seeming muddy. the occasional overexposure gives the images a turquoise tint akin to a cross-processed slide film which doesn't sit well with me. for the most part, i'm happy with the shots featuring greenery, and especially those featuring different shades and hues of purple and the occasional turquoise to contrast the purple. the grain is acceptable, but becomes prevalent in underexposed shots. correct exposure is key in order to obtain the desired shot - of which i lack for the more constrasty surroundings (strong lights versus shadows).

ultimately the LomoChrome Purple XR was an intriguing experimentation that i would love to explore even more. in fact, one might be hard pressed not to feel the urge to load another one of these babies into your camera after your first roll. though the price might be a turn off for some, it is an unavoidable fact that film is becoming more and more niche, what with the increasing prices of film and the discontinuation of too many film photography staples. despite all the hurdles one faces to enjoy film photography, i believe this roll is the first step in rekindling my love for analog photography. perhaps it is time to finish the remaining 35mm rolls in my dry box, or better yet, procure even more interesting films i've yet to experiment on! such exciting prospects!

Canon AE-1
Lomography LomoChrome XR 50-400