Location

JAPAN
  [ ] Hachijojima

Travel Dates

2015.05.01 - 2015.05.06

Film Stocks

FUJIFILM Neopan 100 Acros(expired)

Camera

Contax T2

Travel Notes

Hello and welcome to the first post of this blog! 

Hachijojima Island is far out. It took close to 12 hours on the ferry to arrive in the industrial port. We quickly assembled our bicycles and started what would be one of many beautiful rides through the island. This time, trying to find the small pension we hastily booked hours before boarding our overnight ferry from Tokyo. 

The Bonin Islands, also known as the Ogasawara Islands, or, Yslas del Arzobispo, are an archipelago of over 30 subtropical and tropical islands, some 1,000 kilometres directly south of Tokyo, Japan. The name "Bonin Islands" comes from the Japanese word bunin, meaning "no people" or "uninhabited". Wikipedia

Tokyo license plates everywhere throughout the island. Weird.

It’s Golden week in Japan, a string of holidays connected together in May. One of the few holidays in Japan that actually work at forcing the notorious Japanese Salaryman to stop working.

We spent 5 days riding our bicycles around the mountainous (!!) island, visited beautiful tropical parks, nekked snorkeling, climbed some mountains, dropped in a number of local izakaya’s, and ate our fair share of the local delicacy Shima Sushi. Most of which, of course, I did not photograph. 

This is the first trip I traveled with a film camera. But I hadn’t fully convinced myself that this was the only camera I needed to bring, so I also brought along my trusty Ricoh GR. I figured it would be helpful post-trip in determining whether a film only trip would be possible in the future. Plus I would have a backup to boot. I would later learn that a point-and-shoot, in this case the legendary Contax T2, is one of many great options to travel with film.

Looking back over the years I’m certain of one thing with my relationship with film: I’m really good at making mistakes. This trip, taken around the time my love for film photography was at a high, was no different. I made many film mistakes on this trip. The first, brining only black and white film. At the time I freaked when trying to plan anything with film. So instead of beautifully colored photos of the rare flowers of the region I got blurry black and white blobs on negative film. The second mistake I made was only bringing 100ASA film. This worked out well on the rare times during the trip the sun was shinning perfectly to light the photographs. Most other times I ended up with again, blurry blobs of black and white on negative film. And the last mistake I made was bringing only expired film. Without knowing how much the expired-ness had damaged the film (if any), I learned, albeit after a couple of years of doing this, that if relying on only film photos during travel it’s best to reduce as much risk as possible. A great place to start is to buy fresh film from the shop before departure. The risk of traveling with expired film is not worth the few bucks you save in film costs. Or the efforts you put towards shooting in film in general.

Besides the above blunders the Contax T2 performed exceptionally well and will always have a special place in my heart as my first film point and shoot.