In your bag No: 1270, Koda
The great thing about ‘in Your Bag’ is that you never know what each day will bring. Yesterday it was a very fancy bag, today is a bag on a students budget. But regardless of how much money was spent, the passion for photography is still the same. Check it out.

As a highschool student, my bag is modest and its contents purchased on a very tight budget: the bag itself cost more than anything it holds. I take two cameras, one for colour, one for b&w, a light-meter just incase I doubt myself, and enough film to satisfy a nervous disposition that I might in fact require the 288 shots available here, in one outing…

CAMERAS:

-Zenith/ Lomo (pre- Lomography) LC-A, for colour shots. The Mintar lens creates great vignetting and has great swirling of the out-of-focus areas. I love the look with colour film, so this is its sole purpose. I currently use Lomography’s colour 100 and 400 films, although I’m not really feeling them, so Ektar and Portra are on their way for testing.

-Canon IVSB, for black and white. This is an LTM mount, and is a poor man’s Leica III really, the only advantage over the Leica counterpart being the single rangefinder window. It’s also very light, but built like a tank, and currently sports a 50mm f2 Jupiter 8, which I adore though I’d like to try an Industar 22 50mm which I’ve heard great things about. The Russian lenses are, for me, affordable and they provide interesting as opposed to ‘perfect’ results. I’m not too concerned with lenses famed for their sharpness, because if used well, any decent lens will produce adequately sharp results.

-An Olympus 35RC or a Zenit EM (with the wonderful Helios-44) sometimes sub in for these.

FILM:

Film is most important for me, I feel like getting to know a film’s character, sensitivity and responsiveness yields better results than changing a lens, or body. Colour is less important for me, so I’ll just say that I’m waiting for Ektar and Portra to see how they go. With regards to black and white: I’m still trying out different films but so far…

-Ilford HP5+ 400: really liked the results, developed in Rodinal at 1:25. Only had 2 rolls of this so haven’t been able to experiment much, but pushed to 1600, the grain is fatter than I’ve seen in examples of Delta 3200…

-Ilford FP4+ 125: I bulk roll this, it’s expired (from 1994!) but it was fridge stored, so shoots really nicely at 100iso. I’m yet to try pushing this but so far love the dynamics. The grain is also very very nice, especially in Rodinal at 1:50…

-Polypan F: About 7 meters of this came with my bulk loader. It’s very nice, but seems flat compared to FP4+.

-Fomapan 100 and Kodak T-Max 100, I’ve shot these but haven’t developed them yet, so I’m yet to see… I’ve heard great things about T-Max 100 so I’m pretty excited about that.

DEVELOPER:

-This isn’t in my bag, per se, but i thought I’d touch on it. I’ve only used Rodinal so far, and am desperately looking for reasonably priced Diafine in England. If anyone knows how to get it, let me know!

Of course, a note book and a reading book complete the bag, which also contains a bottle of water, and a shutter release cable (which doesn’t work for either of these cameras haha…)

My work can be seen on instagram.com/kodacouleur and on lomography.com/homes/asaphjeffrey but these need updating, so check back next week!

Thanks JCH,
Koda

Thanks for sharing your bag with us, Koda. It is especially nice to see a high school student shooting film, especially in this, the i-phone age.
Check out the links and please make sure you come and comment.

Keep them coming folks, we need more submissions, so get your bag on Japancamerahunter.com.

Send me a hi resolution image of the bag. Optimum size is 1500 across. Please ensure there is a bag in the shot, unless you don’t use one. The more you can write about yourself the better, make it appealing and tell us a story.

Oh and don’t forget your contact details (twitter, flickr, tumbler et al). Send the bag shots here. Please understand that there is a long wait now as there is a backlog of submissions. Not all make the cut, so make sure yours is funny/interesting/quirky. And please make sure the shot is of good quality, as the ones that are not do not go up.

Cheers
Japancamerahunter