In August, for reasons I can’t even now remember, I decided to load my rarely used Trip 35 with a roll of Kentmere 400 film and take it with me to Manchester Pride. Between then and December, the camera also accompanied me on a family visit to Eastleigh, a long weekend in Madrid, and a “Betwixtmas” jaunt to Liverpool.

Last week I finally got around to home developing the film (in Rodinal). By this point I’d actually forgotten what was on the roll, so it was exciting to pull the spiral out from the rinse and see the result.

As you might hope from an automatic camera, the film was nicely exposed, with those shots taken in the strong August sunshine very obviously more contrasty than those taken in the more overcast winter conditions more recently. In fact my Epson V550 couldn’t actually cope with the excess contrast with automatic settings and I had to manually adjust the curves for the first two strips I scanned.

Overall though, I was pretty pleased with most of the photos. The grain in the Kentmere is evident but not too distracting, with the 400 ISO giving just enough speed to take decently lit indoor shots. A few pictures were slightly out of focus, which is always going to be a slight hazard with a zone focussing camera, and one major reason I wouldn’t reach for a camera like this as a “chuck in the bag and take everywhere” camera.

Here are my five favourite shots…

My only regret is not having a colour film in for Manchester Pride, monochrome film not quite being able to do justice to the technicolour joy of the day. I’ll remember that for next time.