From film to digital and back: A photo blog

October 01, 2023

Garden, at home, in bloom, shot on a really nice budget film

This is a follow-up to the previous post, the visit to the Jardins de Métis. Visiting the Jardins every summer has been an inspiration to develop our gardens at home, and the efforts of the past couple of years have borne fruit.

And it's not just the Jardins de Métis, we’ve visited gardens in many regions of Québec over years of summer vacations. On the first vacation we took once all the kids were in the picture, we stayed at a property with ornamental gardens, near the city of La Pocatière, the village of Saint-Pacôme, in the Kamouraska region. The property is still there, but no longer open to the public for visits. The Villa King had a small cottage behind the villa, available for rent. The kids had the run of the property, though our youngest was only a few weeks old the first year we stayed there. We have also visited the Domaine Joly-De Lotbinière, a wonderful site, across the river and south-west of Québec City, as well as gardens in our travels beyond Québec, from Charlottetown to Oahu to Versailles.

So, when the time came to design our gardens at home, following the loss of several trees (weeping willow to storm damage, maple trees to ants and woodpeckers), Lyne had plenty of inspiration to draw upon.

It’s a work in progress, now three years in. The first year saw the opening of the new flowerbeds in front of the house, emphasizing flowers that would attract bees.

Year two focused on the vegetable garden, with plenty of inspiration from Métis, including flowers outside the fenced and raised beds for vegetables intended to attract butterflies.

This past year, the flower gardens along the back of the property were developed. And our youngest, a few weeks old when we first stayed at Villa King, now studying horticulture, has been providing suggestions and ideas, and growing some exotic flowers in our garden, some examples in the photos below.

A note about the film used for these photos. The costs of film has risen significantly in recent years, and my intention with this roll was to simply test a roll of a low-cost film. The film stock is Luminar 100, from Popho, a Montréal-based company that sells film on-line. The film sells for $14/roll if you buy a 5-pack, which is close to half the cost of a Kodak EKtar or Portra films.I was blown away by the colours of this budget film.

This is yet another interesting film stock. Popho identifies this as re-spooled Kodak Aerocolor IV 2460 colour negative aerial photography film.

Here is how Kodak describes the film: “for general use in medium- to high-altitude aerial-mapping and aerial-reconnaissance photography. It is suited for geological, pollution, archeological, crop and forestry studies; traffic control; city planning; railway, highway, and hydraulic engineering; oceanography; and remote sensing, as well as other areas where photogrammetry is used.”

Given its design for aerial photography, it's not surprising that it delivers sharp images, but the very vibrant colours were a pleasant surprise. I will be using this film more in the future. The only downside is that they only sell it in 35mm format, so not available in 120 for my Hassleblad, RB67, or Voigtlander Perkeo 1. Popho is not the only company selling re-spooled Kodak Aerocolor IV, it is also apparently the film stock in SantaColor 100, FlicFilm Elektra 100 and Film Washi X.

These photos were taken with the Nikon F4 with a Voigtlander Nokton 58mm lens. Most of the shots are with the aperture wide open, or close to it, to minimize depth-of-field and isolate the subjects. This lens really delivers the promised bokeh!

And here are the exotics our daughter planted in spring and nurtured through the summer: they grow on plants that are 4-5 feet high:

Renewal of not just the flower and vegetable gardens, we have also been renewing the fruit trees. We planted apple and pear trees three years ago, and this past year has been a great growing season, with a bumper crop both from our last remaining old apple tree as well as from the new trees: