A short selection of images taken while visiting friends and family in Italy over New Year.

For some unknown reason, these were all taken using older Zenit film cameras. The first set were shot with the Horizon 202 panoramic camera – a camera that begs to be used but which still needs more time to figure out how to get the most interesting results (compare, for example, the images with massive distortion vs those that look entirely undistorted – the result of simply tilting the camera a few degrees and the subject matter!).

The intention was to shoot exclusively with the Horizon, but a film-breakage in the camera put paid to that. I shelved the camera until we returned home and I could recover the lost frames by unloading the film in a dark bag.

Instead, a second, shorter set, were made with an old but seeming unused Zenit 122 SLR that was found sitting unused in a drawer. The camera looks like it has hardy ever been used – which is not very surprising as it is possibly the worst camera that I have ever encountered: flimsy plastic build, a shutter button that literally grates and a limited range of shutter speeds from only 1/30th to 1/500th second. Yet, improbably, the film winder is as smooth as anything from Leica – and the camera still works despite likely having sat unused for some 25 years.

More interesting than the camera was the lens: a Helios 44M-7 (58mm f2). This turns out to be surprisingly sharp and gave some very nice results – although very different from the massive wide-angle of the Horizon.

All images shot on Delta 100 film and processed in DD-X 1+4.