A peek through a broken window at one of the movie set inside the park

Full scale replica of Shanghai's Nanjing Road

It is difficult to write about something 5 months after. For one, I can hardly remember how I got to the Film Park. But I still remember how it happened, I’ve read about this place in Shanghai where many movies were shot, especially the ones that depict Shanghai pre World War II, and for completeness sake, let’s just place that in the 1930s. I can recall Kung Fu Hustle. So, there was no real direction available on the internet, and I had the GPS coordinates only. I remembered taking the Shanghai metro to the southwest, changed into a bus, a wrong bus, and then having to walk a bit and one more bus before I got to within 1km of the park by GPS.

Shanghai Movie Park

As of writing, maps of China on Google Maps has to be viewed in map view and no satellite. There is a little 500m offset on it. I did a little internet sleuthing and came up with this address, copied and pasted (shall I say plagiarized?) without much though:

Shanghai Film Park, Chedun Town, 4915 Beisong Gong Lu, near Cheting Gong Lu
车墩镇北松公路4915号，近车停公路
Coordinates: 31.01228, 121.31037

Now that I have, hopefully, given enough instructions to get there, let me first start by saying that this is one of the hidden gems in Shanghai. Sure, the internet has plenty of day tours, but do you REALLY need a tour guide in a movie studio? I was there late in the afternoon, and there was a movie that was being shot at that time. I can’t imagine another studio where you could just walk up to the set, and watch the film crew doing their stuff.

There is an entry fee, but it is a pittance, a little less than lunch for a tourist. Since a local can eat for less than 10RMB I’d make that clear first. I can’t recall the entrance fee, lets just say its between 10-15RMB at the most. Could even be less.

Came across this working Buick Eight on the Shanghai 1930s set...

... And it deserves a little more scrutiny by my camera.

Immediately to the left of the entrance is a building that seems to suggest they have performances there. I can’t imagine dances and so on happening. I was out of time and I have absolutely no interest in something offtopic when I’m visiting this place for the set. I came with 2 Leica Rangefinders, a M2 loaded with Tri-X which unfortunately, was fogged so the frames looked strange (which would be all the black and white pictures you see here). The second was a Leica M6 loaded with Kodachrome 200. This partly explains why it took 5 months to write this post. With Kodachrome, I had to mail it to Kansas (that would be KS) and wait for it to come back before I could scan.

Replica signboard. This is from the fogged roll of Tri-X. I must have loaded the film into the canister in a less than light tight environment.

More of the set

Tram tracks line the set. I believe these are working tracks.

Entrance to a building that seems like a real working shop near the entrance to the park

This store is definitely empty inside, but put a bunch of extras outside, and you'd never guess

It even has details like these ticket counters from the 30s. Again, pardon the fogged roll of film.

I think I might have seen this building somewhere in Shanghai before. This one is off the fake Nanjing Road. And yes, that's a guy with a rickshaw, probably got lost on the set, either that or it is for hire.

Continuing on, the first would be the giant reconstruction of Nanjing Road in the 1930s. These are actual buildings, but quite obviously close up they look like they’ve been built recently, and the workmanship looks crude closeup. That would be my expectation of a movie set anyway. There is even the Nanjing Rd road sign. I’ve been in Shanghai in years, and I would consider myself quite familiar with anatomy of downtown Shanghai, and I can conclude that this scale reproduction does not follow the actual city center. I mean, Suzhou Creek does not run perpendicular to Nanjing Rd. There is a smaller scale version of the metal framed Waibaidu bridge on Daming Rd spanning Suzhou creek. I noticed that there is even a tram track around. I did see some pictures of a working tram in this set, but I did not see it during the trip.

Village set. Missing horsemen rushing through and villagers scampering back into their huts.

Can't help taking this detail from the village set. I noticed I always like to place the object offset to the right in my pictures. I shall start to place them to left in the future. But this one absolutely looks better on the right.

Here's a lighter set, just a facade with supporting frames behind it.

Wandering around, I explored the other set. I saw sets of old villages, and sets that are purely facades with supporting columns behind. By far the largest set would be the Nanjing Rd 1930s set, and perhaps the most permanent one as well. Wandering to the east of the sets, you’d find a full sized church there. I have no idea if this is a fully blessed and working church or just a oversized store room. Seems wedding couples love to take photos for their mega album here. That afternoon there were at least 5 groups there, group made up of bride with sneakers and wedding gown, groom with fancy tuxedo, and the makeup artist and photographer, and the quintessential guy holding up the gold reflector and remote flash.

THE Church. Architecture does not look very Gothic Catholicish. Even has statues of Saints on the front facade. I will need to do an investigation next time. That van parked in front is, yes you've guessed it, a wedding photo crew.

This wardrobe is just left outside hanging. I have no idea who it belonged to.

Isn't 1930s without period posters

It would seem that before the war, Shanghai was plastered with naughty French posters of can-can girls

I think this kind of paste then let it rot style posters is deliberate. Makes the place look a little more "abandoned" which was probably the mood before 1940s.

What’s for sure, this place is a heaven for photographers. Whether you shoot architecture of you have your own model to shoot for the day. There are no shops in there, but there are fancy toilets camouflaged as the rest of the buildings in the set. So bring water, but no worries on where to expel liquid. Avoid the church if you can, that’s where the wedding photographers gather. And also the metal bridge. Somehow I prefer the real one on Daping Road. The further away you go from the fake Nanjing Rd, the less people you will encounter. You could have the whole set to yourself, but I did not see if you could shoot a movie in there illegally. When it is all done, you could look for a movie being shot and see how focused it really is. As in, you only get people where the action is (obviously) and the rest of the surrounding is like a ghost town, except for the occasional tourist. I bet they have a problem with foreign sound (like someone spitting in the background) during post-production.

Highly recommended destination. Too bad I did not record how I made my way there. But doubt anyone would want to try my long way there. Ask around, check the bus routing feature on Google Maps, do your homework. I think it’s worth it.

And finally:

Getting ready for a take...

Props. I checked it and they're real props.

Extra late for the shoot. The extra's wardrobe are in the van. There were a bunch of them suiting up in Japanese soldier costume, and while the rest are quicker, this guy was the last. Strangely this shot reminded me one of Cartier-Bresson's, except mine will never win awards.

Action! A war period drama being shot.

*end*

Street Performer in Kaifeng

Night Market in Kaifeng

Hanging around in Kaifeng

No phone while driving? Nice one...

National day in China is special. For the party member, this is the 60th such celebration and from what I’ve heard, there will be more fireworks burnt tonight than during the Beijing Olympics and the giant footsteps will make its way to Shanghai, if what I heard is correct. To me it’s quite obvious they will use more fireworks for the 1 Oct celebrations, especially when you consider it will be celebrated country-wide.

Debate aside, along with the midautumn festival, I get to have 6 days off. All of it public holidays.

Now I’ve been fixated on Henan province since early this year when I read about it. Early golden dynastic years of the Chinese empire happened here. Out of the 8 ancient capitals of China, 4 are located here. That would be Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, Luoyang and Anyang. After the first emperor set up camp in Xian, the capital quickly moved to Henan (I believe it was Luoyang, but wikipedia will tell you what it was). Of course Longmen grottoes/caves are here. So is the very commercialised Shaolin temple at Song Shan. Better still, my chinese surname, Chen, the top 5 most common chinese surname, originated here in Henan. The article I read indicated it was in Puyang. My search on the web says another town to the east of Henan which I doubt I will visit due to time constraints. More googling says that it began when Chen state was established, and so on, and the town inside Chen State is today Zhoukou, not too far from Zhengzhou and Kaifeng.

Retro province requires retro equipment. Leica M6 and M2 doing the duties for Henan Province along with 15 rolls of film.

So, the masterplan is to fly into Zhengzhou and cover all 4 ancient capitals and their most important sights and cover two thirds of the cities which are the possible origin of my surname. All these in 6 days.

Henan's Zhengzhou Airport

Will go light. Everything hand carried. Will bring the Ricoh GR Digital for grab shots. Main cameras will be a Leica M2 with Abrahamsson’s Rapidwinder IXMOO for black and white film. This will be mated to a 35mm f2.8 Summaron. A second Leica M6 with 50mm Summicron will be used for colour film. For film, will bring 17 rolls, all from ERA100, Tri-X in IXMOO cassettes, Neopan 1600 for night time, Velvia 50 in case there are landscapes to shoot, Kodachrome slides, Kodak 160NC and finally Ektar 100. That’s a lot, but got to be safe. GPS navigation will be provided with my old workhorse the Garminn eTrex Vista, and backed up by Nokia E71. All these blogging will be done with the E71. The audio recorder PCM-D50 will come along to record ambient sounds.

30 September 2009:
2231hrs: Arrival in Zhengzhou after an hour delay caused by outbound traffic back at Shanghai Hongqiao. Tomorrow is the start of a long holiday, and happened to be the 60th aniversary of Modern China. Zhengzhou airport is quite impressive. I counted 10 aerobridges in a glass building not unlike Pudong airport in design, except the facade is vertical instead of obtusely angled. I had no luggage checked in so it was straight out the door, a ticket booth to buy your 16 RMB bus ticket and crossing a few lanes to board the CITS bound bus. They don’t seem to stop on the way, so telling the counter lady Zhengzhou would do. Had a dejavu, like the airport in Xian I remembered. Same layout, same way to take the bus.

Trip takes 45 minutes on a modern highway. It drops you off in an area full of night clubs, including one that is called Hot Dancing Club… Curious, curious.

Indeed.

One thing I really hate when in a foreign place are those taxis with faulty meters. They are the ones waiting patiently when you arrive and explains the difficulty in getting to your destination due to the traffic. It is close to midnight. I got quoted 40 RMB. My GPSs both told me that the place I wanted to stay in is 5 km away. Even in Shanghai, 5km will cost me less than 15 RMB in a traffic jam. Told the guy to go prey on a REAL foreigner and I started walking. Experience tells me the number of dodgy taxis is inversely proportional to the distance of the center of action. Picked up one about 1 km away and rightly, cost me 10 RMB including 1 RMB tip. And no traffic jam naturally.

View out the hotel, smack in the middle of Zhengzhou. The bright thing is Erqi Square.

Zhengzhou: Hotel room so big it seems they have problems wondering what to do with the space...

Local Chinese hotels in tier 2 towns are hard to explain...

Its close to midnight once I got to the hotel, thanks to the hour or so delay causing us to take off at close to 9pm instead of the scheduled 8pm. Will get some needed sleep now. Tomorrow will head off to ancient capital of Kaifeng.

1 October 2009:
Breakfast at a chinese business hotel. There’s the fried rice, and vegetables stir fried in many ways, but mainly vegetables. There are spicy cold dishes and hot orange juice. Makes me miss turkish breakfast somewhat. No tea, which is strange for China.

Erqi Square in the Morning

Shopping centers surround Erqi Square. Being the important October holiday, this place is heavily decorated.

Its an early start today at 8am. Wandered central Zhengzhou around Er Qi Square with my meterless Leica M2, sure the tricky lighting means a number of wrong exposures. Zhengzhou is just like any other big chinese cities. But noticeably, there are more beggars on the street. They are all mothers with kids, didn’t notice if they were spaced evenly apart, so half-half chance of a syndicated begging scam. So i conclude either the city council does not clean up beggars as well as other chinese cities or perhaps this is a sign that behind the modern facade of this place, it is really just a poor province putting on its best mask.

Tramp on the street of Zhengzhou - Pardon the graininess of some of the Tri-X film here. I had 4 rolls of fogged up Tri-X for this trip. Unfortunate, but can't rescue it.

Waiting for the bus at Zhengzhou long distance bus station

All buses from here are filled to the brim. No passengers on the roof though.

Long distance bus station is nearby. However the queue today is horribly long. Guessing up to 50m long for the ticketing booth. Not surprised as it is Oct 1 today. The start of a long holiday. The space is not too big but there are hundreds of buses here ready to leave in batches. Signboards indicate where the bus is off to, and there are tens of rows of these, mostly within Henan province.

0938hrs: Kaifeng bus does not leave at this bus station as it is not long distance enough or some bullshit like that. So after 30 minutes of waiting in line, I’m not about to go off and re-queue another time. So detour is pending. Reckoning. And so I checked the bus to Zhoukou and there’s one at 10am for 59 RMB. Thats rather expensive, which either denotes this place is freaking far away, or it is just due to the festive prices.

So I am off to Zhoukou. A last minute search on wikipedia before leaving for Henan last night gives conflicting account for the origins of the surname Chen. Chinese National Geographic says it’s Puyang. Wikipedia says Chen State is now where Zhoukou is. I have no way to verify but one way to be sure, this crowded bus station gives me a good way to be sure, I can go to Zhoukou and Puyang to be sure I have been to the original Chen city!

1249hrs: Long time running, because the bus stopped at another station to pick up more passengers. As if it was not loaded enough, they loaded the aisle too, hey, why not fill up the overhead compartment too, Mr driver? But you know when you are in rural China when they do this. We are 10km out of Linying just befor hitting Luohe. It’s a toilet break, at a rather overkill highway stop. There is a proper restaurant here, and stalls for tidbits, corn on cob, and fat sausages.

Zhengzhou even has a tall television tower. This is on the way south towards Zhoukou

1350hrs: Finally got to Zhoukou. Along the way, actually all the way here there are farms on the side of the 2 lane double carriageway highway. Closer to Zhoukou I noticed farmers drying corn on top of flat roofs, like they do in the tibetan villages of Sichuan. The soil here looks dry, bet it has not rained for some time.

Zhoukou itself looks just like any other medium sized agriculturally dependent city in China. I’m ready to believe there are at least a million inhabitants here. Roads are wide and straight, suggesting it was modern, and there are many motorcycles and tractors on the road. Motorcycles are modified into 3 wheeled motor trailers and most of the time there are girls or old women sitting behind it. Air is foggy, polluted and dusty. You’d be happy to be able to see the sun. And unmistakably you’re in rural china. People here speak strange putonghua. She said 40 RMB for the ticket to Kaifeng, and it took me a few tries to understand. For sure they modify the tones. Its like putting the standard pronounciation into a random tone modifier. Just have to ignore the tones and work by context. And yes, people speak loud here. And I’ll say it again, I’m definitely in rural China!

Just outside Zhoukou, the bus stops at this workshop to fill up the fuel tanks.

Zhoukou bus station: This has to be the crappiest bus I've ever seen in China... No offense.

Zhoukou public transport - I hate these. You'd assume they're dirt cheap, but they like to haggle.

... Bringing the goods to the bus station

Not too much time to spend here. There are a few tourist signboards coming into Zhoukou pointing to areas of interest linked to the Three Kingdom legends including, if I remember correctly a memorial to Lord Guan, then again there has to be millions of these around. One dot on my GPS, and I will now have to leave you, provincial capital of the area used to be known as the Chen state. Being a Chen, at least in my pinyin name, I cannot even imagine skipping this town. Even if it means 8 hour detour for an hour visit.

On the way out of Zhoukou, the bus goes straight north on a small road. Here the farming communities are obvious. They dry out corns again, some stalky twigs and the occasional black stuff, which smells like dung. There are so much of it, they really dry them all on roads. Two laned ways become one as half of it is covered with yellow corn kernels.

Outside Zhoukou I got my first glimpse of corn land

Corn everywhere...

And more...

And when you think you've seen enough...

.... you get more corn.

1826hrs: That was a long long way to Kaifeng. Arrived at the long distance bus station, located next to the railway station. Busy area as usual, as for all railway stations in this country. To be safe, I bought the ticket to my next destination, Anyang for noon tomorrow. Will wake up early and visit downtown Kaifeng tomorrow morning.

2011hrs: At Kaifeng’s night market on Gulou Rd. Its noisy, and there are plenty of stalls. Closer to Gulou is where all the food stalls are, and they all seem to be serving stuff on skewers to dip into some kind of shop. Away from the bustling center, stalls start to sell household necessities, and some with those games you’d find in cheap arcades, mainly tossing small rings onto some statistically close to impossible bottles. This is where I will have my dinner tonight. And while shooting the night market, the tape on my Leica M2 IXMOO cassette broke at the end of the reel, meaning not am I running out of film, but I will need to take it out of the camera in a dark room tonight! There goes my planned Neopan 1600 shots of the night market! The backup M6 is sitting in the hotel room, unfortunately.

Dinner. Dumplings.

Not really first class restaurant, but it will do.

and then it's time for dessert at the night market

I don't take hairy crabs, but they have it too...

Are those whiskies?

This I'd take one... the cups were flimsy as hell though.

These two guys were mashing together peanut candy with massive high leveraged hammers. Surefire crowd pleaser.

Locals...

Kaifeng’s night market is easily the size of the one in Xian. And coincidently also filled with chinese muslims. With their skull caps, not ladies in burkha of course. If I were allowed a wild speculation per hour I’d even say that the night market is identical to Xian. Chinese muslims pounding peanut cake, pear tea, brochettes with lamb and plenty of spices. I am starting to love night markets. Dirty but good food, and cheap. Had dumplings, then an apple (supposed to remove the skin I know, but lazy tonight) and topped off with a cup of pear tea. Dont think the total bill ever hit 15 RMB. There is a valid reason for tonight’s frugality on my part. Most chinese hotels take 2x room rate, one part pre-paid room and another part deposit. They can’t do deposit with my Unionpay card, so most of my cash is tied up there. Not that I have a lot of cash in the first place. The ATMs in this town are all out of cash.

Well, this is funny. Walking down the road a few km to my hotel and passed a roadside stall, same old dirty joints you’d find in third tier cities and there’re these well dresses chinese girls munching down their spicy noodles. Across the road is a KTV. So that completes the picture. 2110hrs, and I’m passing the eastern city wall and across the river. I’d better stop blogging before I get run over by a Kaifeng driver.

Kaifeng at night: Notice the night markets

2 October 2009:
0757hrs: I hate people who press the lift before the whole family arrives. And the whole load of people has to wait for them. Families are very much guilty of this social atrocity. And this was my first annoyance for the morning.

Morning in Kaifeng

Morning in the streets of Kaifeng, Inflated decorative lions??? No!!!!

Planned to spend the morning going around whatever is around the center of Kaifeng city. On the map not much is more than a few hundred years, possibly because this place gets flooded periodically by the Yellow river.

0831hrs: At the Grand Xianggou Monastery in the middle of town. There is a 30RMB ticket charge, normal for a monastery. Reading the notice board for tourists outside the place, it says, 555AD during Northern Qi Dynasty… Ok, ten most famous monasteries, and this is funny – please maintain silence in the monastery ground. As I was reading this, a man shouts into his mobile phone as though his microphone was placed on the battery side away from his mouth.

Xianggou Monastery: Ticket Booth

Xianggou Monastery: Entrance

Xianggou Monastery: Local tourists, I love them all...

Xianggou Monastery: Prayer Flags

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery: Reading monk

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery: No idea what they're building a wireframe elephant for...

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery: Music notes & instruments

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery: dishing out prayers?

There are a lot of local tourists here. Blogging away while waiting for a trough in the wave of tourists. Photos look better when it is simple with clutter of groups with the same red caps. Its 9am and the sun is up but the pollution gives light close to the evening sunset colours. Warm colours. The way photos looks best.

1238hrs: Leaving Kaifeng bound for Anyang, yet another ancient capital. This one might be the oldest of the 4 I will come across this trip to Henan. I don’t expect to see anything remaining though. The longer it is, the deeper underground they are.

Kaifeng is a little bit of a revelation so far. Walked the streets last night and more this morning. It doesn’t have a big impact tourist location, but spend some time here and its charm starts to show. There are cars, but reminds me of Shanghai a decade ago, where most cars are taxis and buses. Now most get around by electric cycles, and I estimate they out number petrol guzzlers by 5:1 at least.

Here in Kaifeng, shops still promote their wares the old way. I’ve seen many processions of young sales men/women with company vests or sash holding placards with the promotion they are trying to push across. There is always a leader and some noise, be it drums or an audio recording of some sort. Obviously, the bigger the troupe the more glamourous your shop is. I’ve seen that most are 4-5 people large, but one hawking kitchen wares was about 20 long including 8 maidens holding a large drum on their collective shoulders. The men had the honour of holding the boards. Older shops would sometimes do it the old way, an old man with deep and loud voice standing on a chair on the sidewalk attracting customers into a small leather shop. I have heard that this was they way they do it during the dynastic days and there is a skill involved, no doubt.

Shops try to outdo each other. It is not difficult to find shops putting their wares on the sidewalk. The biggest proponent of this are the alcohol shops. Their goods comes in boxes, so it is easy to put as many boxes outside your shop to show you have plenty of stock, and in effect, I guess, that you have plenty of business as well. And the next shop always has more stock to offer. I don’t see this competition between shops elsewhere.

Kaifeng main shopping street early in the morning.

Public Bus

On the streets of Kaifeng

Construction

Kaifeng even has a church

Holy pants

Downtown Kaifeng

Taking the bus

Old street just around the corner from the church

On the streets, there are more trishaws than taxis. No, these are mostly not human powered. They look like the same shitty rickety mechanical mess meant to transport people, and not to look good, but we are in the 21st century now and electric powered motors have found its way into them all. These 3 wheeled carts are everywhere. I did not take them, preferring the ultra cheap 1RMB buses. Bonus is that Google maps on my E71 now does public transit routing with the buses and it worked even in Kaifeng. Travel just got cheaper! As long as you don’t get to pay roaming data charges or course. Just point to where you want to go and the bus numbers appear in the routing.

Kaifeng Train Station

Little personal transporter can be seen loitering around public transportation hubs here

Long distance Bus Station. On my way to Anyang now...

As the bus inches its way up north, horns used all the time although the traffic in front looked clear to me. My garmin states 65kmph. We’re back to the countryside, evident by the drying of corn kernels on the emergency lanes on both side. The standard form of transport here are the 3 wheeled tractor, a cross between tricycle and muscle 4 stroke motor and motorcycle tires. I guess these are goods transporter but they seem to be ferrying people more than goods. Even trucks here, full sized trucks have 3 wheels. Either 4 wheels are unlucky, thus 3 (5 wheeled transports might be a little difficult to manouvre) or it is cheaper to maintain 3 wheels. Guess i will never know the reason and this will remain one of those mysteries of rural China.

Leaving Kaifeng

On the way to Anyang

... through rural China

Go to Henan Province Part 2…

No it didn’t. Light did REALLY get to the film. Processing was via 1+100 Rodinal on stand development in 27C water for 1 Hour. To my surprise (seriously, there was no big surprise!), the base was all dark, no frame marking at all, and there were just a small trace of image on it. First frame was 90% destroyed, and other than uneven fogging, some Photoshopping might recover some details.

And it did. Actually, the result is less Holga, and more wet plate collodion with a little age induced fogging. Possibly making some nice artistically inclined shots. Here they are…

First picture of the frame. No, its not god rays, but a ship under repair on a floating dry dock. Being the first frame in the roll, this one took the full brunt of the fogging.

All these rural places in China are full of these crude minotaur of a vehicle. The fogging is apparent, but there's also a little texture in it. This frame is in the first half of the roll, so I'm guessing this is the texture of the black backing paper, that somehow managed to transfer itself to the film during the fogging.

This one I like. Looks like the result from a lost world war 2 negative of some Japanese port. No, its Changxing Island circa 2009. And the texture is also here. This one is actually frame no.2.

Stacks of bricks. The actual shot of this is less interesting as the background is visible. The yard is not THAT big, but due to the fogging, it suggests an infinite storage area. On the contrary, but a nice surprise. This one is towards the middle of the roll.

This is a small river that cuts through the middle of Changxing Island. The fogging sets back the scene 100 years to the past. Nice!

Tractors here are all caked in some white alabaster thingy. No I didn't stick my fingers into it to confirm, but up till now I still don't know what it is for sure. This is one of the last frames in the roll.

Surprise, surprise! Now I’ve added another processing trick into my darkroom arsenal!

ERA100 Flatenned Film Packaging

I have been quite adventurous with film. For serious shooting, I’m sticking to Tri-X and just recently 125PX but every once in a while, as I now live in Shanghai, I would try out a Chinese film or two to see how they perform. The first thing that would catch my eye would be the cost of one roll of these local film. ERA 100 costs 10 RMB, or right about $1.5 USD. I have heard a lot about this film from local shooters. The other popular Chinese film is Lucky SHD100, but the only problem I find with it is that it is good for flat scenes, but once you have plenty of contrasts, you’ll find that the chemical tends to leak or diffuse across the border, giving the “glow” look of older RF lenses. 

This was the first roll of film I shot this new year, and over the long weekend I took a long walk around Shanghai Puxi area with my Leica M3 and 50mm f2 Summicron loaded with ERA100 for some street shootout. First thing I noticed was that the film base seems a little thicker than Lucky films, which is a good thing. Lucky has been known to have very thin film, sometimes breaking when the rewind motors are strong.

Developing was not that difficult. Digital Truth  has the right timing for HC110B which I am using nowadays. With the tap water adjusted to 20C, 7:00 minutes would do the trick. However, the result of the dried negatives were not too encouraging. Other than allowing for a little metering issue (Since I dont use meter) the exposures and timing seems accurate enough, but I did see some cracks all over the emulsion layer. I have seen this before during my shooting in Macau, and this is most likely due to thermal shock when transfering the film from one bath to another. I’m guessing during the stopbath to fixer phase, I must have turned on the tap water too hot. It is impossible to use cold tap water now in winter as the water temperature is below 10C, again resulting in thermal shock, but not wise for it to be too high either. 

I did find that the result of the scans were quite soft as well. Only one thing to do… I did some setting up this morning, on a Gitzo tripod and cable release and used up a whole roll of ERA100 to test the characteristics of the film. The result is still hanging in the washroom, so I will update my findings after this. 

So far my experience with this film has been mixed. I will need to see my control roll before I know if it was a user problem with the first rolls or something wrong with the film. Still 50/50 on it.

So bear with me for a moment. I will put up the pictures on the postings and will announce on Twitter or Jaiku once I get them ready. Post processing sucks. But there are some nice pictures there!!!

This will also mark the start of me putting watermarks with copyright logo on the pictures, even though they are all small. Read about how pictures are reused without permission and just wanted to be sure I’m protected as much as possible.

Planning to label the posts with the following:
- *Incomplete* means I have not started on it yet
- *Partial* means that I have loaded pictures from some but not all my cameras yet. Soon to have more pictures coming up.