Fujifilm has been killing many lines of their film that soon they should remove "film" from their company name. One day I bought a 3-pack of 24-shot Superia Premium 400 without any sort of expectations. Since there are only 24 shots instead of 36 shots as usual, I chucked a roll of that into the half-frame camera AGAT 18K to get 48 shots out of a roll. The camera went out with me on several occasions to finish the roll.

At the end of the day, I prefer this superia-ior film stock over the budget line of Kodak film because it doesn't have the Kodak yellow-ish color cast. Orange, red and green on Superia Premium 400 are punchy, while the other color are accurate at various lighting conditions.

This photo was taken next to the Moskva-5 Velvia 100F shots, which made it to the Best #1 of March, as I was waiting for the sun to set and wanted to see how the AGAT 18K and Superia Premium 400 perform in a high contrast situation like this. I probably have exposed this at a hight exposure to retain the highlight, leaving the shadow to be rescued in post-processing, bracketed with another -1 EV shot.

For quite some time, I have been feeling that the purpose of my photography has changed from shooting new things, to trying out new technique, to trying out new camera, to simply producing shots for my next Instagram posts.

I am contemplating a break from photography. With my depth of photo reserve it's possible to keep my daily posting without actually going out to shoot. Probably the quality will drop and there'll be no consistency whatsoever.

Well, these photos are bad and inconsistent already anyway.

With the film price hike I have been stocking up film, and may have contributed to any further price increase caused by shortage…At the time Kodak ProImage 100 is the cheapest film available and people have been praising it a good enough film stock. As a result I bought 10 of that before even trying it out. Very Hong Kong thing to do to hoard thing given anticipated shortage and price increase.

Anyway, even on one of my favorite cameras, Optima 1535, this film struggle to give a satisfying result. Highlight is blown out suggesting a lack of dynamic range. Although Optima 1535 tends to overexpose due to over-voltage of modern batteries, I have never seen similar issue with UltraMax, ColorPlus or Gold 200.

At work I have to spend all the carry-over annual leaves before end of June, so I had been slowly using them up. On a weekday I went to Tai Po Market visiting the Hong Kong railway museum, apparently because I was watching some train videos by a Japanese YouTuber.

The railway museum is lacking in terms of exhibits, with only a few pessenger cars, some histories and no mention of the mechanical or operational side of the rail.

The sky was cloudy and it was terribly hot. The day was about trying out ProImage 100 and shooting something different, something moody. The pessenger cars are full of families, resting staff, at one point a pair of sneaky couple, and this guy, all alone by himself, seemingly unimpressed by the exhibit. Seeing him as he walks away from the pessenger car, I captured this shot while still on the car at a higher viewpoint.

The person walked listlessly along the rail to eventually somewhere blocked by another car, looking down as if he didn't expect the way to be blocked. Also instead of riding a train on the rail he was walking (of couse, in the railway museum), putting out of context this would suggest something deeper. Moody enough.

That's how I personally feel about many things as well. I don't know where I am going with my career, my photography, and my relationship. As if choosing one way (rail) to go shuts me off from every other possibilities, and I may simply hit a wall along one way, like this person who'll eventually have to switch track because the way is blocked by train.

Maybe that's fine, going along a set direction and be able to see the obstacles ahead, even though it seems blocked, I am still getting somewhere, instead of staying where I am, feeling stuck.

As captioned, I was complaining about the dynamic range of ProImage 100. Here the sky is blown way out, while the street appear properly exposed with a good, even dramatic, range of light. This image would still work had I cropped the upper half, yet I kept it uncropped to retain the sense of distance of the end of street ahead. The caption is slightly wrong suggesting it's the fault of Optima 1535's overexposure, but for many other film stocks I shot on Optima 1535, only ProImage 100 ended up disgusting as such.

That day was the first time I visit Tai Po Market, and I wasn't able to locate the entrence to the railway museum. While roaming around randomly, I found this bustling market. Normally I would have felt shy shooting in the presence of so many people, but that day I was feeling quite touristy. This shot was taken as I walked behind an old couple. The whole place reminded me of the market in Vietnam or the local markets in China.

Being able to roam and explore freely, not worried about people's view is liberating.

Tai Po Market is a strange district to me and it's sufficiently different from the city side of Hong Kong it felt almost like a small travel, when government-imposed out-of-fashion quarantine significantly limit people's options of oversea travels. Well, once they realized how easy it is to stop the movement of people one time they can stop it any time, with or without COVID-19 as an excuse.

Optima 1535 is a simple fully automatic film camera that uses only the green/red LED to indicate its shutter speed. There is no way to consciously select the shutter speed and aperture, and there's no documention as to which takes a priority. Even with a maximum shutter speed of 1/1000s, there's no way to force the camera to use it to capture an event ralatively fast in time. In this aspect, the Olympus 35RC appears more versatile in shutter speed and aperture control, and sporting a superior Sonnar-type lens over the Tessar-type Solitar-S.

When a reasonably priced Olympus 35RC showed up, I decided not to pick it up. When it comes to camera of choice, no matter how poorly it performs, the love of an existing camera and cognitive dissonance goes a long way in dissuading another acquisition.

With all that being said, the key here is, Voigtlander Bessa R3A is a great camera that helped me capture this shot with a shutter priority mode. Bessa R3A only has shutter speed automation because the camera has no control over the aperture ring on the lens, the camera tries its best aiding the photographer by suggesting a proper shutter speed when user is manual sets the shutter speed.

This photo was taken in in the old stone quarry near Sam Ka Tsuen, Lei Yue Mun. The location is a famous shooting location despite there's absolutely nothing except a few surviving brick (stone) structures. To capture the texture of stones I put in a roll of Agfa APX100 to test out the grain and contrast of this film stock. That day I was going with a friend and both of us observed the waves hitting the rock, creating an interesting effect.

Instinctively both of us squatted down and pointed the camera at the rocks, and wait for the wave to come. Better yet, a pair of monther and daughter came around walking right into the frame while the wave hits. Bessa R3A's 1/1000 shutter speed helped to sharply capture the instant.

Usually when I am pointing my camera at a place, that place becomse void of people. People avoid the camera perhaps because they don't want their image taken, or because they don't want to block my view. The pair on this photo happened to enter at the perfect moment, both my friend and I are pleased. "Did you get that?" I asked him right after taking this photo, and he contentedly replied: "Yeah".