The last week of April the unplanned trip to Ireland came up. While my significant other had to work for a couple of days and I was left on my own, I took this opportunity to do some photo walks around the city. I’ve never been to Ireland before and didn’t know much about the country. We stayed in Dublin the whole time and took a train only to several coastal towns on our last day. It is a beautiful green country and I’d love to come back someday.

I brought 5 rolls of 35mm film with me: 3 rolls of Kodak Vision3 500T, 1 roll of 250D and a roll of Kodak Tri-x 400 which I ended up not shooting. So I shot 4 rolls of film in about 7 day period. I still think it’s a lot of photos and don’t know how people bring 10+ rolls of film on their trips.

The camera I used was Pentax MZ-6 with 28mm and 50mm lenses. So far this camera visited quite a few countries. Because it’s plastic it’s relatively lightweight, but even considering this whenever you’re on your feet all day, at one point, it starts to get heavy to carry around.

Traveling with film is a pain…. but we do it anyway

The biggest reason I didn’t bring any of my medium format cameras is I wasn’t sure about going through an airport security with film, in many European countries they still decline to hand check the film, so I spared myself a headache and just didn’t bring any 120. With 35mm film going through an x-ray there is still a chance to get usable photos, because the film had remjet and a metal canister unlike 120 film that only “protected” with paper backing.

Anyways, on the way back to US there was no problem with film being hand checked and I my film got back home safe and sound. By the way there are CT scanners in international terminal at Dublin airport, and those would totally ruin any type of film. There are lead lined x-ray protection bags out there, I do own one but in my experience they only arise more questions so I stopped using it. While those Domke bags protect film from x-rays they are still useless with CT scanners and the film will get ruined regardless.

First Day in Dublin

On the first day I walked around the city center and took photos of whatever caught my eye. Also visited Trinity College grounds.

My approach to travel photography is usually very simple. I ask myself if certain scene would make a great postcard. Of course I don’t always end up with post card worthy images but at least it’s a good starting point for someone who mostly photographs people and not architecture, nature scenery, etc.

We stayed at the 200 year old hotel that represented Maximalism at it’s finest. I had to take photos there too, because chandeliers :)

Development, Conversion and Other Tech Things…

Film: Kodak Vision3 500T

Camera: Pentax MZ-6

Lens: SMC Pentax-M 2.8 28mm + 85B filter

Metering: ISO320

Developing: Cinestill Cine Simplified ECN-2 kit

Digitized using Sony A7R4 and Schneider Componon-S 80mm enlarger lens

Converted with Negative Lab Pro v3.0.2

Second Roll of Vision3 500T

It was raining on and off that day so I decided to check National Gallery of Ireland that happened to be in the area we were staying at. I was very much surprised that a lot of historic landmarks, museums, galleries, etc. in Dublin have free admission. The Gallery was cool, and I got more photos of chandeliers, just because :)

Afterwards I had a walk around the park that was near by and discovered there was a very interesting sculpture of Oscar Wilde. It’s made out of different kinds of marble, super detailed and some parts of it don’t even look like marble. That was fascinating.