KODAK ULTRAMAX 400

 I decided to shoot this roll at home, in Exeter, on the way to Seaton and on the way back from Seaton. I shot this roll mainly as a test roll to see if the camera was working which I guess it is. I only used colour film because I didn’t have any black and white film on me at the time. The Espio is a wonderful little point and shoot with a crazy accurate light meter. I say accurate because most of the photos were not underexposed or overexposed by very much and most of the time the exposure of spot on. There weren’t really many that were severely under or overexposed which I am thankful for. Even with the first two for example, the sky is not blown out or too dark and the foreground isn’t completely darkened either so it has a good balance I feel. The camera being a point and shoot has a fixed lens however it has a pretty nice zoom functionality and a flash that you can turn on and off with different settings for the type of scene that you are shooting.

There are frame lines inside the viewfinder that help you to compose the image. The autofocus on the other hand leaves a lot be desired as sometimes it will focus on something you don’t want it to however that only happened in a few images so far. I really like the results of these and am very excited to use it again. Some of the photos give a good vintage look because of the point and shoot nature of the camera and I really like that about the images. It has fast shutter speeds as well as I took a few images in a fast moving car. The bushes in the foreground are a blur while the background is almost frozen in place.

I mentioned that there is a flash. I tested it near the end of the roll and it did quite a good job. My dad isn’t blown out with he flash even considering that there was still quite a bit of light in the scene so the camera did some work and so I guess it compensated for the flash quite well. out of these images, my favourite have to be the ones at home and the ones in Exeter. I also really like the one when I was coming back from Seaton (the one with the blurry bike). I think the sky looks really nice and dramatic and colourful in that image.

 Earlier on in the mentioned the framing. This giving easy composition along with the automatic nature of the camera makes me think that this would be a great camera for holidays. In particular to give a friend while on holiday. If you have a friend who does not do photography and is not comfortable with cameras then I think is a great option for them. It would be interesting to see what results they get. Also with this being film, compared to digital I’m not sure if that really makes much of a difference as loading the camera is as straight forward as it can be and the film automatically advances the film as you go and automatically rewinds the film at the end of the roll. You quite literally just have to point and then shoot.

Below is portrait of myself from this roll that I did not shoot but my non photography friend captured it for me.