5 Frames with an Olympus Trip 35 and expired Kodak 400 Ultramax – by Tiago Meirelles

The Olympus Trip 35 is one of the most reviewed film camera out there. For good reason; it’s cheap, beautiful minimal design, battery free and has a nice lens. I met the Olympus Trip 35 in my early photography days back in 2015 when I was digging in the flea markets after good finds. The first roll I shot with showed that it had a light leak problem and so I left, and forgot, the camera in a drawer.

Some years, rolls, and experience later, I felt a desire to shoot with something faster than my SLR. As a beginner photographer, I realized that my photos looked better when I used a good sharp lens. This is still true, it’s also true that the best photos I’ve taken are the ones I think over extensively. This process, however, drains a lot of energy through the days and weeks of working on a photographic project. And that’s when I remembered the Trip and decided to give it a try.

Leaks fixed, I loaded it with some old Kodak Ultramax 400, expired some 15 years ago – and surely badly stored. I set the light meter to 200 to be sure it would be overexposed, and here you can check the results…

The photos came out under exposed and with a whopping blue shift. Everything I usually try to avoid in my photos… at least if they weren’t taken with the Trip, and that was the beautiful thing about it.

I was a completely different photographer with this little camera in hands. It was simple and pocket sized so I carried it everywhere. I didn’t care about it falling in the floor, friends shooting, and even more, I forgot about thinking about the picture. For being a fully automatic camera, the exercise of shooting is reduced to zero, and so is the time spent thinking about the photo. It was liberating, and I was able to shoot stuff I normally wouldn’t. As the expectations also were nearly zero, I just loved the results. The ‘wrong’ colors, ‘poor’ compositions, ‘unsharp’ details. The Trip showed me again the beauty in the shooting film process. To embrace failure, to reduce expectations, to accept the picture as it should come out, and not as once I dreamed about it.

You can check the rest of my photos at instagram.com/tttuago/

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