EP259: Get Well Soon — Ricoh R1S 30mm f3.5 with Ilford Delta 100 Professional

Roll #259

Film: Ilford Delta 100 Professional
Developed & scanned: Li-lai Photo, 2025/5/30
Camera: Ricoh R1S 30mm f3.5

It wasn't until I seriously started thinking about putting this blog on hiatus that I finally had mental space for the book project I'd been putting off forever. Writing a book has always felt impossibly out of reach — partly because my standards for it are a little out of the ordinary.

I'm a fairly regular reader. There's always a book on my nightstand, nominally to help with insomnia. Lately I've been on a behavioral psychology kick — I just finished Influence, first published in 1984, and I'm currently working through Pre-Suasion, published in 2016 by the same author. Both are excellent. Though I'll admit the Chinese titles always make me a little self-conscious reading them in public — they carry this hustle-culture energy that doesn't really match who I am. I'm not chasing fame or trying to scale a business. I just want to get better at what I do, get things done, and keep my life quiet.

The book concept I keep coming back to is this: pick one photo from each of the first 100 rolls, and use those 100 images as a timeline to tell 100 small stories — things that happened, things I think about.

Why 100? Printing costs money. One photo per page, one story per page — that's already 200 pages minimum. Some entries might run longer, so realistically it lands somewhere around 250. I don't have publishing experience, but I imagine page count needs to stay within a certain range. Too many pages means higher printing costs, higher retail price, fewer buyers.

The other reason to stop at 100: if the first volume does well, rolls 101 through 200 become volume two. And so on.

I think I've made peace with it. Photography isn't something I'm ever going to walk away from.

This is the first roll I ever successfully shot in black and white with the Ricoh R1S — and the results genuinely impressed me. I also went with Ilford Delta 100 Professional, which is pretty unusual for me. I'm normally a Delta 400 person.

#1
What gets me about film photography is that an impossibly thin, lightweight body can produce image quality that modern digital lenses just can't replicate. The R1S is genuinely tiny — the smallest, most capable, and most affordable camera I've ever owned. A lot of that comes down to the 30mm lens. Had it been 35mm, it probably wouldn't be anywhere near this compact. — A big tree I passed on a morning run along the riverbank. It looks exactly like the Cathay United Bank logo.

#2
A big part of what makes the R1S punch above its weight is the viewfinder — it actually shows you whether focus has locked onto the left, center, or right of the frame. Genuinely useful when you're trying to be precise, unlike most point-and-shoots that only meter dead center. — Same morning run, looking straight down the road. You can see the foreground bokeh at the bottom of the frame, but honestly, wide-angle lenses aren't great for subject separation and the R1S is no exception. If bokeh is what you're after, grab a point-and-shoot with a 35mm or longer prime.

#3
A Friday evening. Left work just after four to pick up a repaired camera from Kao Sheng. What I didn't account for was Neihu rush hour traffic. Banqiao to Neihu and back on the scooter — three hours. Never again.

#4
Someday I'm going to put together a whole photobook dedicated to this one tree.

#5
Weighed myself right after a run — 71.5 kg. Worth noting: this was over a month ago. As of writing, it's July 2, 2025.

#6
There are a handful of moments I've witnessed through a screen that gave me genuine chills. Taiwan beating Japan in baseball was one. The other was Jam Hsiao singing "Endless Love" — that performance directed at Jam Jam Yang. I remember exactly where I was: crammed around a classmate's monitor in the university dorms, all of us thinking, who is this guy and how does he sing like that?

#7
I've never been able to make peace with labs that don't return negatives, so Ilford Taiwan Lab is strictly for cross-processing jobs. As for keeping my film — there's a phrase that keeps coming to mind. Something like: I need to see the body to believe it's gone. Maybe I'm too emotionally attached to my negatives.

#8
One of the rare shots where the R1S wide-angle actually has some depth to it — I deliberately placed a foreground element in the frame to create separation. I didn't start riding the bus again until I was around 36, when I got into film. Used to think it was too inconvenient. Now I think of it as a moving light studio with an ever-changing cast.

#9
Just left Ilford Taiwan Lab. Off the bus, walking the rest of the way to a client's office.

#10
Just came from a small WordPress meetup. Street lighting in central Taipei at 9:30pm.

#11
End of a long day. MRT home.

#12
Traffic thins out at night and you get these quiet, empty streets. The halation on film is just beautiful. And honestly — I think the film look is the mainstream look. Why else would everyone be chasing that "cinematic" aesthetic? Here's the thing: film and cinema share the same word. 電影. 底片. Film. Always has been.

#13
Developing in Taiwan is genuinely affordable — usually about half the cost of the film itself. A 400 NTD roll plus 200 NTD developing comes out to 600 total, roughly 1.5x the film price. Compare that to somewhere like the US, where developing can easily cost double the film. Suddenly you're paying 3x per roll. Honestly, Taiwanese labs could all stand to raise their prices. I mean that sincerely.

#14
Took my son to his future elementary school to get measured for his uniform. Pouring rain, but he was curious enough to put on his raincoat and wander the schoolyard anyway.

#15
Just finished setting up my son's room.

#16
At 18, I thought old cars looked cheap. At 38, I think they look incredible.

#17
Rainy Sunday on the freeway. Round trip to Taichung for a BMX lesson.

#18
Zhongshan Station at dusk.

#19
Had errands near Taipei 101. Took the chance to put the R1S lens through its paces.

#20
No aperture priority on the R1S — fully automatic. In direct sunlight it would have stopped down considerably, yet I could still clearly separate myself from the background. f3.5 is more than enough.