The Shitty Camera Challenge: A Day In Nazaré With The Ilford Pixie 35-II

The Shitty Camera Challenge: A Day In Nazaré With The Ilford Pixie 35-II

Back in June we had planned a trip to Nazaré, a city in Portugal that has the best big waves. Unfortunately, it had to be postponed, as was the next trip, and the next. Now, several months later, we finally managed a trip to this wonderful location, and I loaded the Ilford Pixie 35-II with my second roll of Fujifilm Superia (expired 03/2003). Normally, I would apply the 'give one stop extra exposure for every 10 years past the expiry date' rule, but since I've used expired film in the Pixie before at the widest aperture (to get maximum blur) and it's worked a treat I figured it would work if I exposed the whole roll at f6.8.

During Big Wave season, starting around October time to April, the hills around the North beach just outside Nazaré are packed with hundreds, if not thousands, of people watching and photographing the big wave surfers. At other times, the sea is flat, the beach is often deserted, and the road too and from the lighthouse is much less busy. You have to pay to get into the lighthouse, but it's just a few Euros and the view from the top of the fort is amazing. There, you can see a topographical map of the undersea canyon that funnels the sea to create the big waves, and small museum containing a lovely collection of some of the big wave surfers boards.

Actually, when referring to Nazaré, we're actually talking about the region known as the Sitio, the old town at the top of the hill, and the Praia do Norte, the north beach. Nazaré is really a town of three parts, the Sitio, on the hill, which includes the fort/lighthouse and the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Nazaré, the Praia, a sprawling town at the bottom of the cliff and along the south beach, and the Pederneira, which is another old village on the top of the hill. The big wave surfers are taken by jet ski from the harbour at the Praia, and pulled around to the waves in front of the fort. From there the current takes them, ideally on a big wave, to the north beach. It can be incredibly dangerous. 

We arrived about midday, and after a nice sea food lunch spent some time wandering around the Sitio, stopping at the fort and around the town. The Pixie is really a pleasure to use, and so simple. It has one shutter speed, at 1/100s, and two apertures. For maximum radial blur I left the aperture at its widest aperture of f6.4. It was a lovely sunny day so normally I would expect the ISO 200 film to be overexposed. However, since this was an 20-year-old expired film I hoped that would give a reasonably well exposed result. 

In the event, I didn't use the whole 24 exposures in Nazaré, so a few days later I took a short trip to an industrial estate just outside of Vagueira to finish the roll. Back in Aveiro, I took the films for development at Forever Blue and scanned them with an Epson Perfection v750 Pro flat bed scanner and Epson Scan software. When the negatives came back, I was actually quite impressed; there were images, and they weren't bad. Some were overexposed, and I had a couple of accidental double exposures, but with a little editing in Snapseed I had a nice series of images. If you're interested, I’ve posted the whole series in an album on my Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/gp/147583812@N06/juM128q2qv).

If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow the 'Snapshot' WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com@keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline.

#ToyCamera, #ILFORDPixie35II, #TiltShiftVibes #GakkenLens, #Fujifilm, #Superia, #ExpiredFilm, #Expired,