The problem with using film and digital cameras on the same excursion is timeliness. The point of going up to Vaughan was to see what I could see with my film SLR, which was loaded with a roll of the amazing Fujifilm Neopan Acros II. It's gorgeous. The little digital point-and-shoot that I also threw in the bag was an afterthought. But by the time I'd gotten this film back from the lab I had already done some work and a blog post with the digicam files, and had run out of energy for these ones.

But man, do I ever like Acros.

Film's forgiving highlights and exposure latitude give it some real advantages for night photography, and whatever witchcraft Acros uses to get around reciprocity failure solves the biggest problem with using film for exposures that last longer than a second or two. There was enough light here that I wasn't going into deeply problematic durations, but it still helps.

Point light sources and film do have some interesting effects. These were taken with the cheap Nikon 50/1.8G, and it likes lens flare. I'm okay with that. In fact, I bought a filter for it that has a reputation for flare and diffusing highlights as well, so I'll see how the two get along. I already have another roll of Acros loaded and ready to go.

This is an eight second exposure; if I had used Delta 100 then it would have taken 14 seconds to record the required amount of light, even though they're both iso100 film. Like I said, witchcraft. That new filter I mentioned – advertised as offering a 'film look' although it predates digital capture – might improve the halos around these lights, which would be nice.

And while these aren't much as photos, they were fun to take and a good excuse to get out and do something for a change. That's something that I need to do more of.