Saturday, October 29, 2005

Photography and Beijing

Well i'm well into my spell of time here, and the number of photos i've taken aren't as great in number or quality as I would like. Film is also hard to come by - if we're talking anythiing that is half decent.The processing, as you've heard me mention before no doubt, is dubious. That's a big problem in China, there is no consistency in quality of many things - film processing included!

On thursday, I trekked across the city and back today determined to find a place that develops B&W. Having been to a kodak place that told me it did B&W to find that they actually couldn't, I was not too pleased. However, i half expected this, as it's China. Fortunately, the people phoned around and found me a place that does it! Another subway ride later, and havinf forked out 38 yuan, I now possess a ticket that tells me I will have a new set of prints on tuesday. Oh yes....the fun. What odds will you offer me that something goes wrong in the processing? :o

Encouraged by finding a developer, today I went off to find B&W film of a decent quality (i.e. not 100ASA chinese stuff). Tipped off by a post on Photo.net, I hiked a fair distance from a subway stop to a reputable photo shop. And good they were - except for the fact that they didn't have any 35mm B&W - only Medium Format stuff! However, as before, they found me a place that did sell it, and after another small slog, I found an amazing photo shop with more film than I could shake a stick at. Fuji, Kodak and Ilford all present in all their most popular films - including, thank god, HP5 400! It was on special offer to boot (much cheaper than enland too), so now I have a couple of rolls chilling in my fridge, ready for the day when inspiration strikes me :D Now we just have to wait for Tuesday and my 1st roll to come back from the developers'.

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