Today I had a wee job in Inverness, just on the edge of town… so I decided afterwards to go and check out a location I have been wanting a look at for a while. There is a small, dilapidated, boathouse sitting on a loch not far from the city which someone posted on a forum the other day, reminding me that I had wanted a look – and reassuring me that it was well worth the effort.

So off I wandered with three cameras, four if you include the phone, on my person! My Nikon Z6II which I had been using for the day job, a Minolta film camera I picked up in a thrift store for buttons (and I haven’t actually had a film through yet) and THE BEAST – the DaYi 617. The latter I have run several films through now, but with very mixed results. Usually error on my behalf ruining the films, or forgetting a key stage… like shutting the shutter rather than leaving it open, or leaving the dark slide in!

Today was the first success where I ran an entire roll of film through the camera without messing up!

I am so excited about this – particularly as I took a digital frame or two so that I was leaving with something. By tomorrow I am in the dark room and… if I don’t mess this one up in processing… I am excited to see my first decent results (I hope – I may yet grasp failure from the jaws of victory!). I am also processing the film from the Fuji that I have attempted to replace the lightseals on (I have just stripped it down again tonight to clean the viewfinder), so I am excited to see the results out of that one too… and perhaps the 35mm Minolta if I manage to finish the roll.

This leaves the Canon 7 to run a film through before next week and the Nikon F401 which has half a roll of Pan F left in it. So those are the aim for next Thursday… and perhaps some more medium format too if tomorrow goes well!

I still have 4 rolls of Formopan 100 to use, the three rolls of FPP which I am deeply excited by (but it’s too expensive to mess up!) and a box of Ektar 100 colour film (also too expensive to waste, and this one I am saving for the autumn colours!)

But tonight I feel like I am about to, finally, get off the starting blocks with this whole analogue photography adventure!