Faroes Trip February 2020 120

I exposed several rolls of 120 film in my Fuji GW690 “Texas Leica” during a trip to the Faroe Islands in February 2020. The camera has a fixed 90mm f/3.5 lens and takes 6 cm x 9 cm frames, or 8 per roll of 120. I sent them all to be processed by AG Labs.

Costs

Total film stock cost £83.00, plus processing costs £38.80 (£3.49 C-41, £3.99 BW, £4.89 pp, AG Photolabs). Total costs £121.80 for 70 frames (2 were spoilt - lens cap on), or about £1.74 per frame on average. Breakdown by film:

Kodak T-Max 400

The first film I loaded into the camera was one of the rolls of Kodak TMY. As it turned out, the only roll of this film stock that saw the light of day on this trip¹.

Kodak Portra 160

My first efforts with Portra. I think we might have been too far North for this film, which seems to be more at home nearer the Equator. I exposed this film during the rest of day 2 and the following morning. If you think I didn’t take many photos, remember I was also carrying a couple of digital cameras, something I don’t do as much now.

The second roll of Portra I used on the last day, as we cleared out of the house and hit the road for the airport. One the way there, we stopped at the roadside to capture the fishing huts.

Fuji Pro 400H

I used the 2 rolls of Fuji Pro 400H on the 8th and 9th February in different contexts: starting with the Trøllkonufingur, the town of Tórshavn, and at Gasadalur, the iconic lake over the sea.

Fuji Acros 100 II

First time out with Acros was in the early morning as the sun came up over the Trøllkonufingur. In retrospect, this is probably not the best situation to use this legendary contrasty film. The results were not stunning, in my view, and certainly not as good as I expected, but that’s operator error and not a problem with the film stock. Notice the first few exposures are all long, but get less long as the Northern winter light improved.

Ilford Ortho Plus 80

Same applies to this film as the Acros. I’m not giving up on it, because I’ve seen good results elsewhere but I’m not sufficiently expert to get the most out of orthographic film yet. This point is emphasised by the fact that I left the lens cap on for frames 2 and 3. My notes suggest I had an ND filter on for these pictures. That possibly didn’t help much either.