In September 2021, I bought a 5-pack of Kodak Pro Image, a film stock I had used a couple of times before and liked. I had quite a bit of success with that 5-pack, shooting 2 rolls during our vacation to Solvang, which I wrote about over on Simple Goodness. More recently, I liked the results I had gotten with my Canon AE-1 and my Olympus XA so I was expecting similarly good results after loading the last roll into my Minolta Hi-Matic 11.
For the most part, my results lived up to my expectations.
I had gone out 4 times before finishing the roll.
The first time was on the day I also finished the roll of Rollei Retro 400 in my Flexaret Automat VII. Holly and I had taken a walk to the Fairmount section of Philadelphia and ended up at Bar Hygge for an afternoon snack and beers.
My next outing was a lunchtime walk in our neighborhood. On the days I’m able to work from home, I love being able to take a break and get outside for a while. The only downside is my break in time-constrained, and I’m limited to taking photos in our immediate neighborhood.
Holly and I went for a walk the next day, initially to see a new yarn art installation. It turned out to be smaller than we expected, but there were plenty of other things to take photos of.
The Minolta Hi-Matic 11 is a rangefinder camera, and I had some problems with getting proper focus in the past. I’ve had more success recently, but I missed the focus on one photo from this roll.
I came very close to finishing the roll of Pro Image on that walk but ended up coming home with 3 frames remaining.
A couple of days later, I took another lunchtime walk to finish the roll.
I’m a big fan of my Hi-Matic 11 and have grown to really like Kodak Pro Image so I wasn’t surprised that I was happy with most of the photos from this roll.
A
Those new images seem to be a lot better than the first color film you shot with the ‘Hi-Matic’. The seemingly improved results must be due to the Pro-image film(?).
Where do you get your film developed?
Tom
I really like Pro Image and have gotten consistently good results with it so I’m sure that’s a big reason the photos came out the way they did. I drop my film off at a local place here in Philadelphia, PhotoLounge.
Khürt L Williams
I’ve experimented with various 35mm colour film stock over the last couple of years. I loved the results from Kodak Pro Image. I think it’s underrated and often ignored.
Tom
I’ve experimented with a lot of 35mm stocks as well, but with film prices getting expensive, I think I’ll be sticking to the ones I know and like.