Week 9: Canon Ixus APS
Hasselblad owners please look away now. The following content may be disturbing.
Steps to quality photography:
1) Be given a 40 exposure APS film – a type I’d never seen before – by my neighbours.
2) Head to eBay for a 2nd hand camera.
3) Make the local Lofi group look a bit perplexed about suitable film dev reels. They need to be smaller reels as the film is narrower than 35mm.
4) Talk to a mate about the horrors of scanning APS film. It lives in its tiny reel post exposure so is as curly as you like.
5) Send the lot off to Photo Express in Hull to be developed.
6) Experience the joy of receiving photos through the post like the olden days. Okay, they were on a CD, but you know…
Ah yes – there’s the middle bit – the taking photos. For this level of technical photographic excellence I needed a Beer Festival in the Polish Club on the terribly inappropriately named True Lovers Walk in Loughborough and some really old drinking buddies. In fact, I’m not entirely sure I’ve spent more than a few hours with this lot sober in the 20+ years I’ve known them. Ahem. As beer was clearly the priority here, the camera was put on the table, like a disposable camera at a wedding, and we did our worst…
I felt a bit bad about ambushing this poor man, but hey – he’s behind the bar at a beer festival. It can’t be the worst thing that’s happened to him.
I did try and take some outside but I think my judgement was a bit off…the “Rubber Queen” bike wheel is less amusing when sober, and True Lover’s Lane is a bit horrid.
I’m particularly proud of the finger slightly over the lens.
We valiantly tried to bez through the 40 exposures but there were three left at the end. There’s a setting on the camera to take C, H andP (panoramic?) print and the manual says that this can be changed mid rolls. As you can see, the results are stunningly diverse.
Right, next time I’ll use a camera that’s a bit more proper. Promise!
My past posts:
Week 8: Fuji Instax. Abandoned office and a new beginning.
Week 7: Holga – Jack White (at the allotment)
Week 6: Polaroid. Various Failures
Week 5: Kodak Auto Colorsnap 35. Trainspotting.
Week 4: Pinhole Photography: What can go wrong will go wrong
52 rolls 
Thanks a lot for this! I also tried APS film some months ago, they are not easy to get nowadays. For developing I customized a standard reel which worked out very well. Scanning was horrible, though…. but….. I may try it again… 🙂
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I considered customising a reel but bearing in mind the scanning woes and my lack of time, I thought I’d better take the easy option this time!
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Your post once again brings a smile to my face in the way home on a train packed on a Friday night after an awful week…actually my jaw is aching and people are looking at me strangely as a giggle and smirk to myself.
I don’t care what camera you use next week the results will be great whatever occurs
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Heh… I’m only too pleased to help you embarrass yourself in public 😉
The next is a little more serious, but I’m due out with the same lot tonight. The theme is double denim…ideally I’d take a Diana and a flash but I suspect that I may fail to operate it and/or bring it home in one piece!
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I used to have a Canon Elph that shot APS film in the late 90s until I gave up on cameras because there was no more film. I loved it. But I never tried to develop it myself. I found a few old developed rolls without their negatives or prints when cleaning out a drawer recently, had them scanned, and they turned out to be quite lovely. Anyway I always enjoy your posts because no matter what happens we get a pretty unvarnished reality which is much more to my taste than perfection any day. 🙂
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🙂 I’m unlikely to ever use APS again but it was an experience!
I’m quite enjoying using film kinda in the spirit of what it was made for – everyday fun, rather than something artsy… the roll a week means it’s almost happening more instantly than digital. Hopefully the next two weeks will be a bit more cerebral…or perhaps just dull!
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