I love a good photography project, and while most of my projects have been a solo affair, I have been a part of group projects a few times. A couple of my fifty-two roll projects were shared projects with other photographers. But this one is interesting because I am not the one starting the project. Instead, I’m joining in after it has been around the block several times. Initially created by my good friend and fellow film photographer and podcaster, Sherry, it is trying to keep the cost of film photography as low as possible while still being realistic. And while I love working with high-end cameras, I quickly started exploring some of the more budget-friendly options out there last year. The project’s goal is also much less ambitious than my previous projects. The objective is to shoot one roll a month and post it by the 14th of the next month. So I’ll be posting a blog entry on the first Friday, so January’s entry will be published in February.
My camera of choice for 2023 is the Minolta Maxxum 70 with the Konica-Minolta 28-100mm lens. The camera is one I discovered last year as one of the final 35mm offerings from Konica-Minolta and is a nice balance between the pro-level Maxxum 9 and 7 and a more consumer-oriented Maxxum 5. The lens is of questionable quality but hasn’t failed yet. If the lens dies, I’ll swap over to the old-school kit lens, the 35-70/4. For the film, I’m running with Arista EDU.Ultra 100, Freestyle’s house brand of Fomapan 100 a film I know well and am fond of. Developers will be all over the place and may often be connected to a future review or whatever I have. My goal is to post a majority of the images off the roll, which is why I went with 24-Exposures, meaning I should post at least 13 frames and post my favourite 13 to each monthly entry. And that covers it for the introduction; I have already worked through this month’s roll with a proper first entry for a project that I’m new to, my hometown of Milton. So keep an eye out for that going up in a couple of weeks!