Hello everybody,
My name is Miljenko Vranković (pronounced as Mill-yank-oh V-run-koh-vich, but you can call me Mike) and I'm coming from Rijeka, Croatia.
Rijeka is a port town with around 200000 inhabitants, situated at the northern part of the beautiful side of the Adriatic coast. Sorry, Italian
friends, but your side of the Adriatic is nothing to write home about.
My nickname, Fluminian, is a derivate from the Latin name of my home town - Flumen (river) with an English suffix "ian" as in "Italian".
Last time I was shooting film was about 20 years ago. After 10 years long hiatus with only sporadically using my camera (HiFi and programming
took over) my interest in photography was awaken with the arrival of digital cameras. I used a bunch of those in the following years, but the
ones I liked the most were Sony 505V, Pentax K10D and Sony NEX 5n.
During the time using digital cameras I often reminisced about my film days and many beautiful cameras I owned, like Leica M5, Hasselblad C500,
Pentacon 6,Kiev 88 and countless 35mm SLRs and all that was left was a 35mm Cosina CT1 with the Pentax K-mount and a Tokina 28mm 2.8 lens.
Following an impulse I bought an Ilford FP4 B&W film and finished it the same day. The development was left to the professionals and after a
couple of days I received negatives with a CD with scanned images. I was not impressed. I got to do it myself as in good old days 20 years ago.
Besides, 35mm film was not enough satisfy my lust for the film real estate.
So I bought a fully functional, mint Mamiya 645 Super with 55mm 2.8 lens for US$ 318 (transport costs included), new Canon 9000f scanner
for US$ 280 and all the needed chemicals, Paterson Sytem 4 tank and 5 Kodak T-Max 400 films and I was ready. I need to mention that I was lucky
enough to find 2 more lenses from a local dealer: 80mm 2.8 and 150mm 4.0 for another 100 bucks.
I shot the first film 2 day ago in my garden and developed the film the same night. After scanning the film next day I was very pleased with results.
Here is a sample image.
