Last December I went on a trip to the area where my mother was born and where parts of my family still live. It’s an area close to Cologne which is marked by the brown coal industry. There are several power plants still contributing to Germany’s energy supply and brown coal has been mined and transformed into energy there for many years now. But, the mining of brown coal will retire by the year 2038 in order to minimise CO2 emissions and to transform the energy sector towards other forms of gaining energy. Renewable energy is the key word.

I wanted to shoot some images of this scenery with my Mamiya 645 and some rolls of Kodak Portra 400. I had some technical struggles with it on the day and was very happy that I also brought my trusty Minox 35 GT. It fits every pocket and was the smallest 35mm camera (except for its predecessor models) when it entered the market in 1981.

My Minox 35 GT, Christian

It features an — in my opinion — surprisingly sharp 35mm f/2.8 lens and its auto-exposure metering is very accurate. I think especially at smaller apertures (~f/5.6 to ~f/11) the lens performs very well. As it can be found quite cheap on the internet, I can definitely recommend it as a small everyday point-and-shoot camera if you do not mind zone focusing.

The 35mm film stock I had loaded on this trip was Fujicolor Superia X-TRA 400. After using this film for the first time, I have to say that I really like the look of it, with its shadows slightly shifted towards green. After developing the images they were scanned using the Epson Perfection V600 .

Even though I do not like the digital grain that was added by the scanning process, I still like how the images turned out.

In them, you see the power plant and excavator. I really like the late afternoon light and the plasticity of the power plant’s smoke. I think the excavator standing in the mine also makes an interesting motif simply because of the huge size of both the excavator and mine itself.

All in all it was a fun day of shooting film and visiting this interesting area.

Thanks for reading and having a look at my images!

~ Christian

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2 responses to “5 Frames… Of MASSIVE engineering on a tiny camera (Fujicolor Superia X-Tra 400 / 35mm / Minox 35 GT)”

  1. I’ve had my Minox GT since 1985 and the MB since1990. I will never part with them. Brilliant cameras that’ll always be my favorites for my film photography.

  2. Whaouuuu : great ! Bravo.
    I have never tried a Minox, but the lens empress me. I have a Contax T when I go ultra light, quality of Minox is not far.

 

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