The Fujifilm TX-1 Icelandic adventure

Way back in 2021 David Imel came to visit me in Århus. We had been chatting online for some years, initially sparked by the common denominator, the Fujifilm TX-1 panoramic film camera. I have written an extensive review of the camera which you read HERE.
We had a blast, but his stay was way too short. So immediately we decided that we needed to go travel together with our respective Fujifilm TX-1 cameras. Somewhere nice! – Then CoVid had to finish its thing, so time past, but late 2022 we made plans to travel to Iceland in April the following year. By then we had teamed up with my good friend Casper Dam as well as a Casey Cavanaugh mutual online aquaintance of me and David. ( Caseys online alias is GxAce if you watch a little bit of YouTube sometimes 😉 )

After some initial planning, we decided to rent a car and travel to different accommodations during the trip. This meant that we got to see many more different areas of interest since we didn’t have to drive back and forth from a set accommodation. This turned out to be probably the best descicion we made for this trip. This really made it feel like a proper roadtripp too. Something that meant countless hours of conversation. I don’t think I could’ve had better company for this trip, we really had a blast. So much so that we decided to do a repeat within a year, but in a different location. Something that will happen really soon. But more on that in a later blogpost.

As David and I agreed upon back in 2021, we wanted this trip to be centred around the TX-1 camera. And that was definitely the case. Casey brought his XPan (Basically the same camera as the Fujifilm TX-1. Again, read my review for all the technicalities) and David had actually acquired a SECOND! TX-1 so Casper could borrow his. In addition to that we all brought our various digital Fujifilm cameras, and David even brought his very cool 3D printed 6×17 panoramic camera. You can watch his brilliant review on that camera HERE.
But even though we brought and shot other cameras, the focus was on the TX-1 panoramic.

Film choices

The TX-1 is a film hungry beast. You get 21 shots to the roll if you keep it in panoramic mode only, so when setting out for a trip like this you need a lot of film. But what do you pack for a trip to a country where the weather changes constantly? A country where you can experience sun, snow, hail, rain and great skies all within a 10 minute time frame! – Well I chose to pack according to the expected vegetation colours. I have been to Iceland a few times before, and in April the vegetation is slight brown/yellow’ish with beginning green tones. Add to that the clear blue tones of the ocean and the many waterfalls and glacier lakes, and I ended up choosing some film stocks that I hoped would probably bring out the best of those hues.

I ended up bringing

• Cinestill 400D – Especially well suited for the muted tones.
• Kodak Ultramax 400 – Brought as a kind of allrounder, and I knew that I could relatively easily push it to 800 if I needed to.
• Ektar 100 – If we were lucky enough to experience sunny days.
• Kodak Vision 3 500T – For those blue hour foggy shots.
• Ilford HP5 for the black and white side of things

This list turned out to be rather perfect. I ended up shooting all the different types of film, and I think the results turned out fantastic. I was especially pleasantly surprised with the Cinestill 400D and the grass tones in overcast weather. Super muted and nice. As expected all the orange earthy hues popped on the Ultramax 400, and the Vision 3 was insanely cool when we suddenly found ourselves in rolling fog near the complete outer-worldly scenery at Vestrahorn near Höfn. This is also where I shot some of the most insane portraits of Casey and his “vacation mask”. The images of the old church at the hilltop near Vìk was also a perfect match for the black and white Ilford HP5. The Ektar performed very well on our long drive up to Kirkjufell. So all in all it was absolutely the perfect little arsenal of film.

The TX-1 in the field

Up until this trip I have mostly been shooting street photography and cityscapes on my TX-1. Shooting panoramic is a different beast since you need to make sure that you fill the entire frame with lines or content, or else it just looks tame. Tilting lines will punish you right away since they always end up REALLY tilting over the wide course of the 65x24mm negative. This is no different when shooting landscapes. The leading lines needs to be very clear and tight, and the horizon needs to be held very straight, or else the image composition completely crumbles.

I always enjoy doing landscape work. It’s the complete opposite of fast paced pulsating street photography. It’s slow, precise and zen-like! It’s so very liberating using 30 minutes or more on location just setting up the tripod for the perfect angles. It’s slow, and it’s wholesome as he**!

The TX-1 was definitely made for this kind of shooting. Using it in the field is so very easy. It’s compact, so weight and mass is held down. The thread for the tripod mount is offset to the far left of the camera which works really well for using a tripod. At least I really liked it.
Using big square ND or grad filters is however a pain in the ass since it blocks the viewfinder. For some long exposure work I ended up using a 49mm ND1000 filter. It worked great.

The TX-1 is by no means weather sealed, so you definitely need to protect it when or if rain suddenly starts pouring. And trust me, with all this delicate non-repairable electronics inside, you will WANT to protect it at all costs 😀

Images

Well this is what it’s all about. The images! I ended up shooting more than 230 frames on the TX-1 during the trip and I narrowed it down to 70+ images in total that I have chosen to show you.
I developed all the films at home using the Cinestill CS41 kit and Rodinal for the Ilford. The Vision 3 was also developed in Cs41 even though I used the remjet remover from my ECN2 processing kit. Negatives were scanned on my Canon 9000F mkII as 12300x4500px resolution tiff files. I have then done dust removal in Lightroom, as well as correcting light levels and/or contrast.

So enjoy all these images from epic Iceland. At the bottom you’ll see some vertical panoramic. Those are always fun. And I always regret not shooting more of them .