Perthshire, March, Kodak cine film

I've just finished a batch of scanning, so thought I'd pop up a photo post to follow up from this entry a couple of weeks back. In that post I spoke a bit about my approach to photo note-taking. I also shared some iPhone pictures. Today I'd like to share some of my more considered pictures from the same trip.

Technical details:

• Camera: Pentax MX (1979)
• Lenses: Pentax-M 50mm f/1.7, Pentax-M 135mm f/3.5
• Film: Kodak Vision3 250D cine film

I'm still blown away by the quality of Kodak Vision3 every time I shoot a roll. It's the best-kept secret in photography at the moment – although its popularity is growing and I suspect it will eventually supplant traditional C41 colour film for many photographers. Aside from its unbeatable image quality, it's much cheaper than every single C41 film I'm aware of.

It's interesting to compare these results from my Pentax MX with images from my (much older) Leica M3. The Leica's lenses create a very different look – but the Leica also consistently creates sharper pictures. I think this is because the Pentax MX is an SLR with a mirror. Even at a shutter speed of 1/125 (which I used for most of these shots), the effects of mirror slap are visible in the final image at high magnification. But the Leica is an analogue mirrorless camera; I can handhold it down to at least 1/30 with no need for a tripod, and have never seen camera shake in an image. Turns out the old ads from the 1950s were right after all. You really do get better pictures with a Leica!

All images © Alex Roddie. All Rights Reserved. Please don’t reproduce these images without permission.