Blogging has been a wonderful way to share my passion for film photography - on occasion I get contacted by brands or companies who want me to write a blog for them - usually these brands have almost nothing to do with film photography or are just totally random products so I tend to say no. But recently I was contacted by The Film Camera Store who asked me if they could send me some film and some film cameras to review - HECK YES was my response and this here blog represents the first of three reviews that I’ll be writing. Yay!

First up we have the Olympus Trip 35 - I’ve not tried one of these before although I did have it’s cousin the Olympus 35RC which I reviewed HERE it was a great camera especially for travel.

The Trip 35 is reminiscent of the 35RC although more automated / less control for the photographer which I think speak to it’s original purpose as an ideal travel camera (and yeah the name trip is a bit of a giveaway too). For example it’s a zone focus system - you set the lens to one of four distance settings (see pic below) rather than focusing it yourself, therefore the viewfinder isn’t coupled to the lens.

You can shoot in aperture priority mode by choosing the aperture yourself or you can set the camera to A which is fully auto. ISO is selected via a ring around the lens.

I’ve recently decided to make more time for photowalks and just shoot whatever happens to catch my attention so let’s see where the little Olympus Trip takes me. I’ll be shooting a roll of Flic Film Elektra 100 film which has also been supplied by Film Camera Store. I hadn’t heard of this stock before, a bit of internet research shows me that this is respooled Kodak Aerochrome IV film which is used for aerial photography, documenting landscapes and surveillance (eeek).

I loaded the camera and went on a walk along the canal that runs through Slaithwaite where I live…

The film cassette advised to load the film in low light due to it’s sensitivity and as a very thin film base it can be prone to light leaks on the first few frames but I seem to have avoided this - the negatives did look VERY thin once developed so I was interested to see how they came out - I scanned the negatives on the Epson V600 and processed the scans with the Negative Lab Pro plug in for Lightroom. I gave the images a little tweak here and there - mainly just adding a bit of warmth as the initial scans felt a bit cool (as in cold… you know what I mean)!

The film is interesting, I like the tones - it’s got some pleasing contrast. It is sharp and quite smooth although shadow areas have more noticeable grain which isn’t unpleasant - reminds me of Kodak Gold in that regard. It doesn’t seem to hang on to highlights all that well and can feel a little washed out, it was VERY bright sunshine so that maybe the Zuiko lens as much as the lens.

I shot the camera in auto mode and let it decide on the settings - it does have the ability to be shot in semi automatic / aperture priority mode too.

The lens and the film have done a pretty good job here - with strong sunlight washing across the scene and some lovely rays of light captured, there’s a slight drop in contrast as you’d expect but not much, I think the camera did a good job of metering the scene to get a good exposure too.

One of the tricky things with zone focus is not knowing exactly where your plane of focus is, which means there’s a little bit of trial and error involved - if I was to keep this camera I would definitley look up what exact distance the focussing indicators are set to and event take a tape measure out to check when shooting, but for these I just winged it - in the shot above I kind of missed focus.

In recent years people have been clearing the overgrown banks of the canal and carving out places to live - generally consisting of an assortment of barges, caravans, trucks and shelters. There is a definite pioneer / frontier vibe going on (Wild Wild West Yorkshire).

In bright sunlight the film is very clean and has a pleasing tonality if as mentioned previously a little washed out, I gave some of these images a little contrast boost in processing.

So there we have it - I really enjoyed shooting this Flic Film Elektra 100 with the Olympus Trip - it felt good to get out and just snap away - it makes a nice change of pace to just point and shoot!

If you’d like to try this set up for yourself then you can check out Film Camera Store and get an Olympus Trip 35 right HERE and a roll of Flic Film right HERE

Big thanks to Film Camera Store for lending me the Trip 35 and a roll of film to burn! I have another camera/film review I’ve done for them coming soon!