21^th of July; Belgium’s national day. for the first time in my life, i went to Brussels on Belgium’s national day. i thought there would be lots of interesting things to see on that day, but i was WRONG! it was way too crowded(for my likings) and due to a death threat against Queen Fabiola, you couldn’t really go anywhere you wanted…

 

so in the end, i finished only one roll of slide film(120 format, 6×7, so ten pictures in total :p). it was also the first time i used my Mamiya 7II (w/ 80mm lens; equivalent to 39mm in 35mm format), so i’m actually posting a test roll here. the pictures aren’t all that great, but they’re still okay(sorry Sebastian! i know i should strive for more (blog) quality, instead of posting entire test rolls :D). i’m more disappointed in the way my scanner can’t correctly reproduce the colors of slide film. i’ve experienced this before with slide film. the colors simply don’t match up with the colors seen on the slides. quite a shame, ’cause i like the colors of Ektachrome 200… especially with the slightly yellow cast due to expiration of the film).

 

photo geek info:
Mamiya 7II, Mamiya N 80/4 L, Kodak Ektachrome 200 (expired in 2004)

 

when i saw the scene below, it immediately reminded me of the heated discussion about banning headscarfs in Belgium. i think it’s a pretty pointless discussion though, which is generally fed by xenophobes *slash* Islamophobes… the Belgian flag with “nostalgia” written on it, reminds me of the people who keep whining about how good everything was when there weren’t so many immigrants around yet… *sigh*

note to self: stop walking before taking a picture next time ;)

 

this picture looks better on slide, because my scanner has cut off the lower part of the picture. the woman’s elbow isn’t really cut off on the original picture. Ektrachrome slides have this big border at the top and nearly no border at the bottom, so the neg holder overlaps the bottom part of the slide, hence a part of the picture is cut off…

i need anti-Newton ring glass for my scanner so badly, so that i can finally scan the WHOLE negative. i best buy it before i start scanning this shitload of film, ’cause otherwise i’m going to end up with cropped pictures again :-/

 

at some point, i even found a random building site more interesting than Belgium’s national day.

 

this is my favourite picture of the roll. i stood next to him for a while; observing him, setting up my camera, pretending as if i was going to take pictures of the soldiers behind him(when he looked in my direction) :D

here, he looks quite surprised, yet curious…

 

… and here, he looks rather annoyed by me taking pictures haha :’ )

 

these poor fellas stood there like this for soooooo long. you can tell by the guy in the middle that it was pretty tiring. they each looked up like that from time to time.

 

little guy watching the soldiers with their flags suffer.

 

there i stood… completely locked in by the crowd and barely able to move. and before i even realized King Albert flashed by in his “pope mobile” like jeep. i wasn’t really prepared for this, so i quickly guessed at camera settings et voilà… still a miracle that i was able to take a picture, as it all happened so fast.

 

cropped to square format. looks better this way…

 

there… my first roll with the Mamiya 7II. i especially used slide film to check how accurate the light meter(center-weighted, not ttl) was. i’m so used to ttl metering, but exposure was pretty accurate *yay*! i just love my Mamiya 7II!

 

ps: i excluded one picture because it was completely unsharp. sometimes i get too enthusiastic and then i tend to forget that i’m taking pictures with a rangefinder… and i simply forget to focus *n00b* :” )

 

 

cheers.
bert