I used to shoot slide film and Tri-X on my Olympus OM-4. Mostly rust and abandoned places – the slide film for the former, grainy black and white for the latter.

I kind of gave up on photography when the last lab in town that developed slide film shut down, and my friend got a Canon 5D. It was the first digital camera I had seen that took better pictures than film, and there was no way I could afford it, so why bother with photography anymore?

For my photographic dark ages the only camera I had was a Ricoh GR Digital II. Sometimes I borrowed a Canon 70 or 5 from a friend, but even if the pictures were techically good, I never got the right feeling.

I used to crank up the ISO to 1600 on the GR and shot black and white squares. It kind of looked like Tri-X and it was fun, but I never took it very seriously and never made anything of the photos.

Eventually I realized my iPhone took better pictures than the GR, so I gave up the last sliver of pride and shelved the camera.

My new Fuji X-E2 has changed everything.