Last weekend my friends and I made a little trip to Chambers Flat Strawberry Farm!

It was such a fun experience to pick our own strawberries and spend the day together. We are all in our late 20’s now and have been friends since we were 12-13. We all have busy lives in different stages of life so we don’t always get the chance to get together, but the few times we do every year is always a blessing and feels like nothing has changed in the last 15 years.

Bringing my film camera was the best idea I could’ve had. Shooting my friends in natural lighting is my favourite things to take photos of and film truly allows them to shine! I chose my Pentax Spotmatic as it had a half-used roll loaded that I wanted to finish (the first half was from mid-2019 when we could still travel and COVID-19 didn’t exist!). The Pentax Spotmatic for some reason isn’t my go-to favourite camera, but it is a wonderful experience shooting with it and I’m always pleased with the results. It’s a great beginner camera and I’d highly recommend it for anyone wanting to get into shooting film.

I truly love my friends and am so grateful for these adventures with them. I highly recommend scouting your local area for different fun activities like this – it’s spring in Australia so it was the perfect time to pick some strawberries and have some fresh strawberry ice cream!

Strawberry fields forever

Every now and then you come across a camera that has a brilliant concept. To see the sprocket holes? YES PLEASE. But some can disappoint. That’s how I’ve felt about the Sprocket Rocket by Lomography.

You get some okay shots, and some awful ones.

A big downside to this camera is the cost of processing. It cost me $42 for develop & scanning the photos in this post, as they have to use their medium format equipment in order to scan the sprocket holes. I don’t think I’m completely done shooting rolls of film with sprocket holes, however I think I will try to find another camera to use (maybe a medium format one with 35mm adaptor as the cost/benefit of using the Sprocket Rocket unfortunately fails.

I think the photos turned out exactly as you’d expect from Lomography – they love light leaks and imperfections, but I prefer clean photos from my favourite SLR cameras (eg. Canon AE-1, Pentax Spotmatic) that I can put in an album to pass onto my kids one day, so I’ll be sticking to those cameras for the foreseeable future.

Honestly this roll of film was so old (dates back to 2015) that I don’t really remember where anything was taken, especially the giant apple; I have no recollection of taking those photos at all!

Photos taken with Lomography Sprocket Rocket using Kodak Color 400.