Amongst the many film Fuji has been discontinuing, Fuji Superia Premium 400 seems to be one surviving "Premium" film from the company. The film is expensive and appear to come with only 27 shots per rolls. Double that to 54 shots if shooting on a half-frame camera like the AGAT 18K.

I found it hard to understand what this film is good at. Red is punchy and the film is visibly grainy at half-frame format. The signature "Fuji green" is largely missing. I probably have underexposed most of the shots and they came out disasterous, sign of low latitude. I believe this film is best used in full-frame portrait shots with good light, even though it's an ISO 400 film.

On April I had not spent much time shooting. One day after work I chucked the Superia Premium 400 into my AGAT 18K, hoping to get more photos into the limited 27 frames that the film has. I walked from Tsing Lung Tau towards Tuen Mun Road Interchange to capture the sunset on Moskva-5 and Provia 100F while shooting something else on AGAT 18K.

The sun has been setting in Hong Kong since 2019, no 2014, and everyone has been trying to flee from the city. Looking at the sunsetting road towards Tuen Mun, I realized there's nowhere to go.

I have stayed in both San Francisco and small town Davis in California for 6 months in total, and 3 weeks in London. The western way of living and the culture over there doesn't match what I am used to, even though Hong Kong is already an international city. And that's not some Chinese quality I am looking for, but the Hong Kong quality.

Hong Kong can no longer be found, except in our memories.

With Olympus 35RC, Voigtländer Bessa R3A and Agfa Optima 1535, I have gotten myself a collection of shutter priority, aperture priority, and automatic exposure cameras. While the Minolta α Sweet does them all at a fraction of the price, it's not a rangefinder.

And I asked myself, for an indoor shot like this using Kodak Vision3 500T film, what's the best camera to shoot with? Perhaps not with flash, there's ample of light and I do want to capture the low light areas as well. Well, all of them work. Maybe erring towards aperture and shutter priority over fully automatic, as I still want some level of control over how much depth of field I have.

With that being said, I would probably choose to bring Optima 1535 over 35RC for its full automatic exposure ability. During a trip it's simply better to have a fully automatic camera. To save even the trouble of rangefinding, Olympus PEN EE2 is probably the best bet, with trading sharpness off for convenience.

All of which I wanted to use, to compare, if only Hong Kong opens up and cancel the hotel quarantine requirement on return flights.

This shot and the next two were taken in M+ museum during a private viewing session. As such there weren't many visitors over there.

The architecture was designed by Herzog & De Meuron. Open space spanning multiple levels help make each level a larger space and allowing natural light to shine through. The concrete structure of the building itself is exposed without painting. What visitors see is the raw structure instead of decorated, rectangular spaces.

For a long time it's been difficult to nail exposure of a high-contrast scene like this. Using Kodak Vision3 500T film, it allows for a larger exposure latitude. Instead of blowing out the highlight just to preserve the shadow, both parts of the image had been properly preserved.

For indoor shot, perhaps that's best film available.

Another high-contrast shot taken with Kodak Vision3 500T and Olympus 35RC. The highlight is well preserved and I like the rather punchy orange.

On the lowerst floor of M+ museum there's a line of bells hanging from the ceiling spanning over multiple floors. Sign says the staff will swing the line from time to time.

All that person does is stand and wait there, and swing the line at indefinite time. I was there for like 10 min and he's done nothing except for standing there looking at the line of bells. Perhaps also as guard stopping rogue visitors from messing with the exhibit.

Perhaps there's more satisfying work that that. But aren't we all just doing work as we are told, and all work is proper work.

Sometimes I struggle to understand what am I shooting. More like the photos created is the side-effect of simply operating my cameras. I feel more excited to use a new a camera than to see good photos coming out of every shoot. That is not the wrong thing to do, but it is not the thing I want.

Nah never mind, just read more, shoot more. I will probably get somewhere with that.