The journey from London to Munich by train involves 3 trains, announcements in multiple languages, a potential for delay in connections, and plenty of scenery along the way. I documented my trip with an Olympus XA2 and one roll of Lomography Berlin 400. Here are my impressions.
As I am not the biggest fan of getting on an airplane in the current climate, I decided to opt for the train for a recent trip to Munich from London. It is actually quite easy to do, involving the Eurostar to Brussels, and high speed German Deutsche Bahn ICE trains from there to Frankfurt and onwards to Munich. Of course, not everything goes smoothly with train travel all the time, so I had to deal with an unplanned changeover at Cologne for the Munich train. Annoyingly the (unplanned) changeover was really not long enough so I had to sprint to get to the next station or the connection and did not have time to photograph the iconic Cologne Hauptbahnhof.
A bit more about the camera
For this trip I decided to pickup an Olympus XA2 camera and pair it with a fresh roll of Lomography Berlin Kino 400 film that I had been saving for something interesting. I had my eye on the Olympus camera for a while after hearing some great things about it and also given the fact that it can easily fit into your jeans pocket made it a winner for this train trip. My Rollei 35 is also small and mighty, but it is built like a brick and would definitely not fit comfortably in trouser pockets. Both cameras work using hyperfocal distance for focusing, so you just set it to the corresponding distance and, in theory, what you want to be in focus should be. The Olympus sports a 35mm f/3.5 Olympus D.Zuiko lens in a clamshell type camera body.
The Olympus XA2 waiting to board and take some great shots on the 9 hour trip to Munich.
A bit more about the film
Tomography are very good at brining out new emulsions and film types. I suspect many of them might be recycled or from a long lost larger roll that they’ve recently acquired. Either way, it is great to see new stuff on the market. A great review of this film here.
According to Lomography:
Berlin 35mm is a B&W cinema film: extracted from a roll of German cine stock specially for Lomography and steeped in the legends of 1960s New German Cinema. A panchromatic emulsion rated at ISO 400 but able to be pushed to 800, 1600 or ever 3200 while retaining an impressive level of detail.
Flexible and atmospheric, Berlin 35mm film will help you create timeless and cinematic images of your own.
I didn’t really have a theme going for this post, just knew I had 36 exposures to take over the 9 hours-ish I had on the journey.
Ready to go!
I quite like how this shot came out, it is really ‘busy’ with all the lights and lines, but it is a photo pretty much empty of people.
One of my favourite shots (even though it was my second shot!). Starting to see this film can be quite grainy too.
Classic train shot.
What else to do when you see a mirror?
Luckily the Eurostar was quite empty so I had plenty of space - this is ‘somewhere’ (definitely in the UK I remember that much!)
Dartford Crossing - it is an impressive bridge from the train.
I really like how this came out.
I think we are in France now. Quite a moody shot too with the grain and the clouds.
A Deutsche Bahn ICE train to Frankfurt (supposedly, as it decided it would stop in Cologne instead).
Black & white landscapes.
9 hours of trains does get boring after a while…
Coming into Liege station
It is a wonderful station, unfortunately the train stopped just in the middle of the platforms where there were some works going on. To check out some impressive shots of this station click here.
Completely blurred but I like the overall idea and how it came out.
Taking a break from mask wearing to have a cheeky wine!
Frankfurt airport train station.
I really like this shot, taken as we were pulling out. I like how it is a bit blurred.
Another shot at the airport of some strange looking contraption.
Frankfurt in the distance as we go over the river Main (hence Frankfurt am Main). I used to row on that water!
Frankfurt main train station is a large terminus and coming into it you see loads of tracks sprawling out in every direction.
Frankfurt and some goodness, glorious, grain!
Not sure what these buildings are, some kind of power station. I really like the mood in this shot with the over exposed sky contrasting with the darker shapes of the buildings and train tracks.
Another really grainy shot. I don’t dislike it, I just was not expecting it. This camera is fully automatic, you set the ISO and it figures out the aperture and shutter speed.
I can’t quite remember where this was, but I think it is coming into Nurnberg station. Even though it is an extremely busy shot with all the wires, I really like it - lots of personality!
Overall impressions
I really enjoyed using the Olympus XA2. It has a huge following (as does the XA version, which is a rangefinder, also future versions XA3, 4). I may do a review on this camera in future, as I have not done any gear reviews in a while. The camera fits so easily into your pocket you forget it is there. As it performs like a point and shoot it is probably the ultimate street photography camera.
For the film I didn’t really have any preconceptions about it as I had not done any research into it, the word ‘Kino’ (cinema) in the title led me to believe it might be a bit like Tri-X or Kodak Double X. I would probably have to shoot more rolls and perhaps with different cameras to come to a more detailed conclusion. Some of my shots show strong contrast and dark blacks (which I really like), but some have quite strong and seemingly uncontrollable grain, which whilst not a problem, I wonder if it has to do with the semi-automatic nature of the Olympus XA2 camera. I’d love to shoot a roll of this with my Leica, I guess I’d have to do it in Berlin too just for the cliche.
Either way, I really enjoyed documenting the London to Munich train journey. Obviously it is hard to get in-focus shots when the train is travelling at 200km+ per hour, but I am glad I chose black & white film as it has a bit of an edge to it.
I hope you enjoyed these shots and the brief insight into my long train trip!
See you next time,
Neil
