Vintage Lenses | Film Cameras | Street Photography
Longhua Martyrs’ Memorial Park offers a few things the rest of Shanghai doesn’t. Soviet-style communist sculptures and peace and quiet being the main ones.
It makes for a decent trip out of the city centre – especially when you consider Longhua temple is right next door too. Take your camera and perhaps even a picnic.
These are some shots I got from Longhua on Agfa Vista Plus 200 in the Yashica Electro 35. Come take a look and come learn more about the place before you visit.
After about a decade away, I returned to one of my very favourite cities in the UK. So of course I had to take the Yashica Electro 35 GSN and a roll of film with me.
That film was Silberra Pan 400 – a Russian stock that ran a Kickstarter campaign in 2017. This roll was one of the rewards I got for backing that.
The last time I went to Scotland’s capital, I wasn’t really into photography that much. So it was nice to go there and come back with some shots of some landmarks and, of course, some Edinburgh street photography.
Not the clearest article title there, is it? But it does describe what you’re about to read pretty well if you give it a chance. And that is a 3-step process for shooting the kind of images I like to shoot.
It’s not a hard thing to get your head around and you don’t need to do street photography for it to help you. It can be useful whatever you shoot.
Want to know what the process is? Then come take a read as we go through it from its logical beginning to end, and all illustrated with a bunch of street photographs shot on film using it.
Rangefinder film cameras aren’t always the easiest to get to grips with when you’ve never used one before. As you can see from the title, I’d never used one before I shot this roll in my Yashica Electro.
If you’re wondering how it went, you’re not too far away from what I was thinking while shooting. I had no idea how it was going either.
The short version is it finished better than it began, which is understandable as you get used to a camera. The long version is inside. Come read it.
Sitting out to the west of the city centre but still absolutely in Shanghai, Qibao old town makes a lovely day away from the shiny skyscrapers of China’s biggest metropolis.
If you’re going to go there, try to pick a day with fewer people. So neither a weekend nor a national holiday. Try also to pick a sunny day. Then you can take advantage of the light and get better photographs.
Trust me. I shot parts of Qibao – on Fujicolor Industrial 100 film – on both bright and overcast days. Come see the difference good light makes to your photography here.
m50, at Moganshan Road in Shanghai, is one of the city’s most iconic art districts. It’s also one of the only places in town you’ll find genuine street art.
I went there with the old Olympus Supertrip and a roll of Fuijfilm Industrial 100 to get a few shots, which you can see in this short essay.
Come take a look, find out how the m50 art district came about, and how you can get there if you’re in Shanghai and want to check it out too.
The Shitty Camera Challenge was pretty much as the name suggested. That was… to shoot with a shitty camera. You could use any film you wanted and then were to post the results to Twitter.
There was a suitably bad first prize, which I don’t know who won right now but I hope it wasn’t me, and lots of fun to be had on the #shittycamerachallenge hashtag.
For me, it was an excuse to get out again with the Canon Sure Shot AF-7 and try some Rollei Retro 400S for the first time. This is how it went. Come take a look.
Nanxun water town sits not too far from Shanghai, which makes it a good getaway from the city. It’s also a pretty photogenic place, if that’s what you’re into.
And if you are, you won’t want to make the same mistake I did which led to coming back with just four photographs – shot on Fujicolor Industrial 100 – to show for it.
Come read what happened, see how to avoid the same happening to you and why, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t really a failed trip at all.
Qingdao is synonymous in China for its beer, but there’s more to the place than drinking. Having said that, the Tsingtao brewery and beer street *is* a must visit if you’re in town.
So too are the beaches.
So with a single roll of Ilford Pan 400 to work with, I focused this photography essay on those two things – the beach and the beer. Come see how it turned out.
