Lauenen with the Pen FT

Remember when I said I was close to done buying cameras?

Hahaha anyway so... I bought a Pen FT. I can't remember what triggered my initial obsession with it. I knew Marc Rebillet (Loop Daddy) uses one and loves it. I think I was looking for a way to shoot film on my upcoming 2 week trip (mostly) away from civilization and wanted a mechanical half frame to save money. Anyways the Pen FT entered my GAS awareness zone somehow and I couldn't stop thinking about it. After a couple weeks of looking into it and deciding the only cure would be to buy one, I bough the one languishing in fotostrobo's inventory and it showed up right when I got back from the states.

I immediately fell in love. I don't really vibe with SLRs, but the fact that the Pen FT has no hump in the middle and the viewfinder is closer to the left side of the camera meant it felt a lot like using a Contax G or a Leica.

The metering system is also interesting because it shows you how many stops you need to stop down from the widest aperture of the lens, vs a needle showing if you were over or under. I actually found this helpful for learning how to meter by eye more than other in-camera meters I've used, because instead of having to look through the viewfinder while adjusting the aperture until things line up, I could pre-guess the settings, check once then adjust as needed. Other camera meters basically only tell you if you're more than one stop over or under, or within one stop, which if you're really off with metering by eye means fidgeting with the aperture/shutter speed until it's right. It's not actually that big of a difference but I felt like it taught me better than other cameras I've used.

So this camera showed up I think the day I landed back in Switzerland from the US, and then I left the next day to go to Lauenen with my husband Dani. One of his coworkers leads a yearly yoga retreat and they let me crash his room for an extra fee. This year it was again in Lauenen. I only brought the Pen FT, without shooting and developing a test roll, so I had no idea what the shots would look like, but given that I bought it from Fotostrobo I was confident the camera at least worked. 

And it did! Some shots on our way to Lauenen:

The next morning, I finished off the test roll walking around shortly after sunrise:

I'm super impressed by these lenses. I think I was mainly using the 25mm f4 basically the whole weekend, and it looks crazy sharp for being 60+ years old, single coated, and half frame.

The next day I hiked with the yoga sqaud up to Lauenensee with a roll of aerocolor in my Pen FT:

I ditched them at the lake and hiked up to the Geltenhütte

While walking around the Geltenhütte, I noticed some guys carrying skis barefoot across the alluvial plane behind the hut. I hiked over to meet them and asked them what they were up to. Apparently they had climbed up to the top of the mountain and skiied down, and were just walking back to their tent that I had taken a picture of half an hour ago. I asked them if I could take their picture, and they said yes!

They told me I had to explore the area behind them a bit, and there was a really good angle on the waterfall about halfway across the plain. I had to take off my shoes at the first river because there was no good way to cross without getting wet, then left my shoes off for the next hour walking around.

I then headed back down to Lauenen to meet up with Dani and the rest of the yoga people. On the way up, there was very little snow to cross. On the way down, however... 

But all good, I made it back down to the lake safely.

It's an insanely beautiful area and I want to explore more behind the hut. I will definitely be back.

The next day, I hiked with the group up to the nearby ridge and then down into Gstaad. Unfortunately the light wasn't that great for most of it, very flat and hazy, but I still got some fun pics of the group:

Then we went home, and I finished the roll of aerocolor on my way to work:

Scanning and inverting all of these half frame pics was definitely annoying, especially when you develop 3 rolls at a time. I'm going to look into ways of automating this better...(foreshadowing ooo). 

But I highly recommend the Pen FT. The lenses are great, the camera is beautiful, they're usually not too expensive, and you save money on film! What's not to like.