Bilbao in November rain (A One-Shot Story)

We flew from Munich to Bilbao in mid-November 2022. Bilbao is a city in northern Spain, not far from the French border and located on the Atlantic Ocean.

The city is known for its culinary scene and the Guggenheim Museum. We wanted to combine both. The picture shows us coming out of the Guggenheim Museum, climbing the stairs and making our way to the city center to enjoy the Basque version of tapas and good wine in a typical pintxo bar. As a former industrial city Bilbao is both modern and raw at the same time.

The rain showed a surreal scene that I was able to capture well with my small, analog Minox 35GL and Ilford XP5 film.

I have several Minox 35s and I always take one of them with me when I’m traveling and don’t want to carry a big analog camera. It is light, small and inconspicuous. The lens can be protected by a folding mechanism and it fits in any pocket. I usually have a black and white film and a Kodak Gold 200 with me.

It is amazing that the film-camera combination produced such a good photo in these adverse lighting conditions. I was walking, stopped briefly and took the photo out of my hand.

If you don’t own an analogue Minox 35 yet, you should buy one. For around €50, you get the smallest, lightest and most robust analogue camera that you can take with you wherever you go.

Better to buy several, because they are available with different lenses, with adjustable focus and fixed focus.

You can carry two cameras with you, one for color film and one for black and white film, and maybe another for fixed focus snapshots.

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