'Five frames' in Águas Boas with the Minolta 110 Zoom SLR, 03 July 2022

'Five frames' in Águas Boas with the Minolta 110 Zoom SLR, 03 July 2022

This post has been sitting around for about 2½years. Back in July 2022 I put a roll of 110 film through my (then) recently acquired Minolta 110 Zoom SLR camera. I then discovered that our local lab could no longer process 110 film, so the exposed cassette remained in my bedside cabinet for the next couple of years. Just before Christmas 2024 I found out that the lab has a new machine, and this can process 110 film. So, to cut a long story short, the images dropped into my inbox just before New Year, 2025.

I've left the text describing my visit to Águas Boas pretty much untouched, so references to 'today' refer to early July 2022. The only real changes have been to the text referring to the images, which are great.

It's been sitting on a shelf for a long time, but today I finally got around to loading taking this dinky little Minolta out for a test. I had been looking for a 110 camera for a while, but I didn't want one of the cheaper poorer quality 110 cameras that are ten-a-penny, I wanted something a little more ... special.

I had my eye on the Pentax 110 SLR, but these are quite expensive and one never seemed to come on the market. Then I spotted this unusual looking camera on the Kamerastore website and I was besotted. I didn't get it straight away, of course, I did a little research first, but reviewers seemed to like it, especially the image quality for a 110 camera, so I ordered it.

I'm not going to go through the minutae of using the camera, suffice to say that the it was designed for use with either 100 or 400ASA film, and although Lomography do make 110 film at 100ASA I had already ordered some Lomography Tiger film, which is rated at 200ASA.

If you load a 110 cassette without the ridge that determines the film speed the camera defaults to 100ASA. As Lomography Tiger is 200ASA then to expose properly you need to adjust the exposure compensation of the camera. So for this test the photographs were taken at EV +1, which hopefully will expose the film properly. 

I took the camera out to Águas Boas, a nearby village, and in the woods behind our house, a place that I always go to try out new cameras or just to take some infrared images because it's so green. I wandered around by my favourite tree, in the woods and the park and bandstand in Águas Boas, snapping my way around the village and enjoying the sunny day. 

After exposing the film I unloaded the cassette and headed to Aveiro to drop it off at the lab. Sadly, I discovered that their machine had developed a fault and was  out for repair. The option was to send the film to the Porto branch, but then it was revealed that at Porto they can't process 110 film. So I headed back home to look for a local lab that would process 110 film, which was next to impossible. 

So the 110 cassette remained undeveloped and sat in my bedside cabinet for the next 2½years. Then, in December 2024 I popped into the lab to get a film developed and discovered that they have a new machine that would develop 110 film. I returned soon after, cassette in hand, and dropped it off fo developing and scanning. I was a bit pessimistic that I would get anything at all, but I needn't have worried. About a week later I received an email from WeTransfer containing the images from the Minolta 110 Zoom SLR, and they were great!

I was a bit worried (yes, another thing to worry about) that the EV+1 adjustment for the ISO 200 film might not have worked, but the exposures were perfect. The quality and sharpness of the images were also amazing, especially for the small negative size of 110 cameras, compared to 35mm. There were a couple of images where there were light leaks, but I'm thinking that these were more down to my poor storage conditions than a fault in the camera. You can see some of the results here, but if you're interested in seeing all of the images from Águas Boas, I've added them to a Flick album (https://www.flickr.com/gp/147583812@N06/02iyM77kxf).

In conclusion, I was delighted with the results from the Minolta 110 Zoom SLR, and even Lomography Tiger 110 film. The weather has been pretty unsettled just lately, but when conditions improve I'm determined to take the little Minolta out again, hopefully with some other colour shifting emulsions like Lomochrome Turquoise or even Lomography Redscale, since that comes in 110 film format, too. This time, though, it won't take me 2½years to get the films developed. 

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#1970s, #automatic, #camera, #film, #110format, #minolta, #retro, #slr, #aperture, #grain, #vintage,