As promised in my previous post, here are the film pictures snapped on my trip to Connemara at the end of November. As you’ll see, when I’m travelling like this, I tend to shoot the same scene with both film and digital. I’m a lazy photographer and so using both means that I can set the ISO of the digital camera to the ASA of the film and see how the shutter speed and aperture setting are going to look on the fully manual film camera*.
(*Approximately of course. Differences in lenses and format mean that the two will always have obvious differences).

For these pictures, I was using a Mamiya C330f twin-lens reflex camera and Ilford FP4+ film that I processed and scanned at home. It’s not really the ideal travel camera, but when you’ll not be too far away from the car, it’s manageable. I did make the mistake of lugging all of my gear and a tripod up Diamond Hill and not taking a single picture.

As I continue to discover Ireland after our move here in 2018, so far at least, Connemara is my favourite part. While the hills are not as high as Kerry, nor the coast as rugged as that further south, there is a peacefulness to the area that I really enjoy. The entire area is covered with small lakes and rolling hills, and even by Irish standards, very few people.

I drove up with walking boots, kayaking and camera gear but no real plan. Being the last weekend of November, the days were short and the sun never made it very high into the sky. There was a strong, cold wind, but in my limited experience of Connemara, this was unusually fantastic (my previous visit had been during Storm Deirdre) and so I made the most of it…

These first few pictures were made around Lough Inagh, from the R344 between Recess and Letterfrack.

I spent the night in a hostel in Letterfrack and after my bar meal for one, went for a quick walk around the village. I came across this scene – if you’re familiar with some of my older work, you’ll know it’s a scene that I wouldn’t be able to resist. I headed back to the hostel and dragged out my camera gear…

On this trip, I was also experimenting with some new neutral density filters, to extend exposure times and get a little movement in the clouds and water, or to allow use of wider apertures. The filter size for the Mamiya happens to be the same of that on the Zeiss Sonnar 50 f/15 that I was using on the digital camera, meaning that I could ‘dial in’ these long exposure times too.

Dog’s Bay and Gurteen Bay are two back-to-back beaches with low dunes separating them. It’s a pretty unique place. The cloud had settled further inland, but on the coast, the sun was doing its best. It made for some interesting light.

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Gubbins:
Mamiya C330f TLR camera, Ilford FP4+ film processed in Ilfotec HC and scanned at home on an Epson V800.

Too see the pictures full-screen, click on them below:

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