I shot a roll of Agfa Vista Plus 400 with my Rollei 35 in Bangkok Thailand. I shot some street photography, urban landscape, monuments, and night pictures with a cable release and a tripod. It was a lot of fun.
I love the “seventies” look of the Agfa, it gives a vintage ambiance to the scene. I bought the roll for 185 baht (5.5 USD) at Siam TLR camera store in Ploenchit. That’s where I bought my cable release for less than 8 USD. The owner is very friendly. He repairs himself the cameras in his shop.
The Rollei 35 is easy to use, but sometimes you can forget to focus, because when you look in the view finder it looks fine. With a rangefinder, you can’t forget to focus because you see that the 2 squares are not aligned in the viewfinder when you frame. With the Rollei, it’s a distance focusing, the settings you do have no connection with the view finder. Besides, you need some practice to evaluate the distance.
To meter the light, I used 3 different ways ; the Sunny 16 rule, the meter of the camera, and an iPhone app mylightmeter pro. I was surprised to notice that vey often the Sunny 16 rule gave the exact same result as my app ; surprised but reassured that it was the right exposure. compared to this methods, the meter of the camera tends to underexpose. But in fact, now that I see that many of my pictures are a little bit overexposed, I think that I should have followed the indication of this lightmeter.
You can see below the video and the pictures.
Erawan shrine. one of the most revered temple in Asia.
View of Lumipini, Silom and Sathorn
The night pictures were shot with a cable release and a tripod. around 20 seconds exposures. a little bit overexposed.
same landscape day time . it was cloudy, you will see further below the same pictures on a sunny day.
Din Tai Fung restaurant in Central Embassy . delicious xiao long bao!
fruit seller outside of Benjasiri park
British Club :
Police headquarter in Siam
again, view on Lumipini, Silom and Sathorn, this time on a sunny day :
They are a little bit overexposed in my opinion
this one is certainly overexposed :
Royal Sport Club in Rachadamri. Around the golf there is a race track for horses.
Benjasiri park , next to Emporium
Grand Hyaat Erawan
out of focus!!!
Pathum Wanaran Temple , between Siam Paragon and Central World
what is this flare ? a light leak ? I don’t think so because I shot other pictures with a lot of sun and there was no flare. I think this might be a reflexion because I shot in backlight. Or maybe it was a divine intervention…
