In November, we visited one of my favorite places, Zion National Park in Utah. Utah is my favorite state in the US, largely due to the week I spent roaming the high desert around in 2017. This November I took my film camera with me.
Last year I bought a cheap Contax S2 so I could use my old Contax lenses that I had lying around. Unfortunately, it has only spot metering and with me being lazy to learn how to meter my photos correctly, it turned out disastrous. I just could not get a single photo right. The two roles I put in were both severely underexposed. After watching a recent video from @Badflashes, I realized that there were cheap Canon film cameras out there with the trusty EF mount that had good exposure meters & autofocus. I bought myself the Canon Elan 7 & a few roles of Portra 400 in October.
I used the Canon Elan 7 most of the trip instead of my Fuji. The photos unexpectedly came out great. Here are some of my favorites from the trip. I scanned the negatives at home using my digital camera using a contraption of a tripod, a few levels, Digitaliza+ from Lomography.
The Watchman #
The West Temple #
River Rock Roasting Company #
(They have the best sandwiches & pizza in the Zion area)
Canyon Coffee #
Hotel Hoop #
The hotel we stayed at had a random hoop right in the parking lot.
Pine Creek #
Sunlit trees near Pine creek.
Antelope Canyon #
We drove to Page to visit the Lower Antelope Canyon. It was fun to take a few shots in the dark of the canyon. I spent almost a role and thought that the role was wasted because of the absence of light, but I was pleasantly surprised while scanning to find a few good shots.
“Lady in the Wind”
“Everest”
The film was processed by TheDarkroomLab down in the LA area. I had also ordered the high resolution scans from them but was not too impressed due to heavy highlight clipping. I also had a role of Ektar 100 which I accidently exposed by opening the back thin while fiddling with the back remove button.
Hoping to share a lot more film on here in the next few months!