down © Lilly Schwartz 2012

Since I went out with my Zorki again yesterday, here another Zorki picture from my last roll (shot on Ilford HP5+). It was taken at Potsdamer Platz a while back on the way back from the cinema. I like the soft tones and the feel of the picture.

Yesterday was one of these days haunted by analog problems. After two shots I was out of film and didn’t have another roll on me. So, we went on an odyssee to buy some more film. We went into one of the drugstores at Friedrichstraße, but they only had C41 black and white film, which I didn’t really want to use. Then we went on and walked about 2 subway stops, without finding anything although we were sure that there was the Taschen bookstore somewhere around there as well. Finally before reaching Checkpoint Charlie we gave up and walked back. Then down in a posh mall we finally found a photography shop … which closed 5 minutes earlier. We could see some film through the window, and a woman tidying up, but she wouldn’t open up again.

By then we were already quite tired and decided to go to the English language section in Dussmanns instead of continuing the search for film. Dussmanns is a massive bookstore and we spent quite some time browsing through it, through the photography section, the comics section and the German language for foreigners section. That’s what we were planning to do before our odyssee in the search of film started, so in the end we still had a successful afternoon.

You know what was frustrating though? To find that the other drugstore on the other side of the station Friedrichstraße sold normal black and white films, but only ISO 100. Once we found it it was already getting a bit darker and we were just about to go down into the subway, so ISO 100 would have been useless. Well, next time I go out with my Zorki I’ll take another roll of film for sure!