Just got back from 2+ weeks travelling round France with the family. I took three film cameras with me and a ton of film. It's the first time in years that I've taken this sort of collection with me
To cover a few different bases I took a Pentax ME Super, a little Pentax Espio p&s (recommended by Miller some years ago) and my original Holga 120 SF. I took b/w film only for the Holga (nasty Lucky 400 and Classic Pan 200) and colour film for the other two (Agfa Ultra and Fujifilm Reala).
Anyway, it was a lot of fun shooting non-instant film again after such a long time away and I got through 15 rolls, so clearly there wasn't a lack of subject matter, but it was hilarious watching how out of practice I was with the whole 'managing multiple cameras and films' aspect of the trip.
Being with the family and doing day trips more or less every day meant that I couldn't take my camera bag with me ever and space was limited in my back pack. It was hot in France - around 36C on average most days - so my good wife argued (not unreasonably) that water was more deserving of back pack space than a 3rd camera. This meant that I rarely had everything I needed in one place.
The thing that caught me out most frequently though was throwing a camera in my bag and then forgetting to check that I had film for it. I'd take 3 shots with the ME Super, finish the film and then realise I only had 120 film in my day pack. This happenned so frequently that by the end of the holiday I actually
was packing the right film for the day, but assuming that I hadn't and not bothering to check
Fool!
The Espio was awesome BTW; the perfect snapshot camera. It fits in my trouser pocket, at 28mm it's nice and wide and for those close-ups it has the hilarious optical zoom (talk about Pinocchio). I used that the most. I did manage to get into the ocean with my Holga just like the old days and that was a lot of fun too, but occasionally I found myself not knowing whether I'd wound it on or not after taking a photo. I'm anticipating a few doubles as a result :-)
Will post anything decent from the trip when the film gets back from the lab.
