The letter "H" and Hawthorn, from the Celtic Tree Alphabet Trail - a series of mosaics scattered around the Black Isle, that were made by various local groups and schoolchildren. This one's on the side of the beach café at Rosemarkie.

I'd started shooting these in sequence with the huge Bronica last year, with this being the last one I'd "successfully" taken a shot of, before the camera stopped working. Conditions were brilliant, on that very early morning that I cycled those miles with the hulking camera and tripod. Checked the exposure, carefully set everything up, and took the shot. No problems. One more done. Great. Or so it should have been. When the film came back from the processing lab, that frame was missing from negatives. I was more than a little p****d off! I'd been expecting that to be the best of the set, so far. Oh well.

This is the first shot I've ever taken with this camera, a Yashica TLR, and I'll be attempting to use it for all of this month. Bit of a gamble using a totally unknown ancient camera for Blipping, but I'm well used to that now after film Blipping for several years. Whilst like the Bronica, its 6 x 6 medium format, it's just not in the same league as far as overall quality's concerned. That was what I was expecting, and the results very much bear that out. For the photos taken after the first couple of days, there's something very much amiss with their contrast. That could be processing lab related (a different lab!). I won't be using this camera for recording the rest of the mosaic project. Will have to get the Bronica fixed for that... sometime.

The first spool came back just after I was reaching the end of the second. It made me wish I'd just used the usual, and preferred, Black & White film... of any type!



Yashica Mat-124G : f/5.6 : 1/60" : 80mm : ISO100

Lens: Yashinon 80mm f/3.5
Film: Kodak Ektar 100 (Colour negative)

[Frame : 01]