Neither Lara nor I had ever visited Italy and neither had plans to do so until we saw one of the episodes in Rick Stein's "Long Weekend" series a month or two ago. Bologna was described as Italy's food capital - being in the region where Parmesan cheese (Parmigiano Reggiano), Balsamic vinegar and various other wines and delicacies originated. More importantly, he described it as not very touristy and having a wide selection of fantastic museums and medieval / renaissance art and architecture. We both enjoy seeking out history and neither of us enjoys being in the middle of a tourist frenzy.
As Lara had to use up some holiday entitlement carried forward into this year and I also really needed a break, we booked a cheap 4 day / 3 night trip. Then the ever-present question of what camera(s) should I take raised its head. I have "previous" for taking too much kit with me on the pretext that if I don't have all the bases covered, I'll guarantee that I'll miss out on something important. As we knew Bologna's topography is quite flat, the temptation was to pack a bit of everything. However, I managed to resist the temptation - primarily to save wear and tear on my back and knees - So I packed my Leica MP, 28mm f2.8 Elmarit-M, 35mm f2 Summicron-M and 50mm f2 Summicron-M. Ten rolls of Ilford XP2 Super and a bag completed the roll-call. I don't think I've ever carried less on a foreign holiday. Barring 10 frames, I shot six rolls in 4 days. I guesstimate that at least 75% of the photos I took were using the 35mm Summicron.
The weather forecast hadn't been too encouraging with Sat/Sun predicted to be wet and improving Mon/Tues. How wrong could they have been? Totally. We had 4 days of sunshine (occasionally a little hazy) but mild temperatures and a gentle breeze. Perfect. In some ways not so perfect, though, as the contrast between light and shade on the boulevards and narrow streets made me check and double-check exposures to avoid a totally "soot and whitewash" look, with burned out highlights and black, impenetrable shadows. The film was exposed at 320 and I erred, continuously, on the side of over-exposure. I overexposed by 2-3 stops on some of the strongly back-lit scenes but let others go almost silhouette. My ultimate objective is to produce a photo-book.
My friend processed and scanned the film for me (he runs a small camera shop and lab near to where we live). I'll post a selection of those I processed (via Lightroom CC and Silver Efex Pro2) and see what you think works and doesn't work.
