I took a long walk around some key sights in madrid with expired fuji superia 100 and a roll of ilford panf50 - join me for a bright winter day!
My friend Jim gifted me a few rolls of expired 35mm Fuji Superia 100 film and I decided that bright Madrid winter sunshine was the perfect place to try it out. I decided to underexpose by 1 shot just to counter any degradation of the chemicals as the rolls were so old, if anything I figured the shots would be super bright if not. I was glad I did because the results were really good!
My plan was to visit Madrid’s cable car and then go for a walk through the city on the way back. It was a really bright Saturday and the city was buzzing with people.
I shot 2 rolls of expired Fuji Superia 100 film on my Leica MP paired with a collapsible Summicron 50mm f2 lens and a Elmar 135mm f4 lens. For the black & white shots I used my Rolleiflex and 1 roll of Ilford Pan F50.
The start of Madrid’s cable car, that travels 2.5km to the Casa de Campo, the largest park area in Madrid. Funnily enough, this was my first time on the cable car!
I was in a cabin on my own and managed to get some nice shots of the city disappearing behind me and the mountains were also very visible.
There are some good views of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range along with a distant view of Madrid’s new-ish skyscrapers.
And of course some excellent views of the Royal Palace (forgive some blurry shots due to a tiny and old cable car cabin moving quite a bit!).
A view of the Royal Palace in the distance.
It was unusually warm for February (upwards of 15 degrees) and people were out enjoying the mid-Saturday sun. I think these pictures really capture the essence of people just relaxing and enjoying the sun.
Madrid’s Templo de Debod - an ancient Egyptian templte donated to the city of Madrid.
More shots of the Temple on Fuji Superia 100 and my Sumicron 50mm f2 collapsible lens.
Great clarity from my Rolleiflex shot on Ilford Pan F50.
classic madrid shots
I then continued my walk through the centre of Madrid, passing by Plaza España and continuing up the Gran Vía and ending up in Plaza Mayor. The shot below is taken on Ilford PanF50, a real favourite film of mine, although you need really bright conditions for it if using handheld.
Plaza de Españ, including a reall cool statue of Don Quijote and his sidekick mate Sancho Panza.
More shots around Plaza España shot on Ilford Pan F50.
General walkabout through the centre of Madrid, some really great lighting too!
Madrid has some really cool side streets and I like how the light falls on them.
overall observations
Thanks again to Jim for the couple of expired Fuji Superia 100 rolls, and I suppose thank you to the bright Madrid sunshine too! I really love how these shots came out and I think under exposing them on purpose actually helped and made them ‘pop’ a bit more. It was also really nice to visit somewhere in Madrid I had never been before, curiously enough I don’t know any of my Madrid native friends who have visited the cable car either!
I was also really pleased with the medium format shots, I forget how great the Rolleiflex is for a walkaround travel camera. I am also very pleased with my new Leica combo of collapsible Summicron 50mm and the really underrated by amazing Tele Elmar 135mm lens, they suit my style very well and I can use both of them with the viewfinder magnifier, which makes a real difference to composition precision.
And to finish off the walk I of course enjoyed some local food…
Thanks for tagging along for this long blog post and see you next time!
Neil
