EP287: The Fire Is Out — Nikon AD3 35mm f2.8 with Kodak UltraMax 400

Roll #287

Camera: Nikon AD3 35mm f2.8
Film: Kodak UltraMax 400
Developed & scanned: DEP Lab, 2025/9/3

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Today I finally worked up the nerve to entertain a big idea: sell off some gear from the dry cabinet, scrape together 200,000 NTD, and buy a Hasselblad XPan to bring some interesting content to this blog. I was actually taking it seriously — mentally drafting a list of which bodies and lenses to sell, even considering building a dedicated sales page with a progress bar so readers could follow along with the XPan Fund.

Then I made the mistake of actually researching the camera.

I'd somehow never looked into the XPan properly, since it always felt too far out of reach to bother. Turns out everything I thought I knew about it was wrong. I'd assumed it was a compact, fully automatic point-and-shoot. It is not. The XPan is a manual rangefinder — the exact type of camera I like least — and with one lens attached, it weighs close to a kilogram. I was genuinely stunned.

Where that memory of the XPan being a point-and-shoot came from, I have no idea. But as a rangefinder, my desire to own one evaporated immediately. And when you think about it purely in terms of image area, the Fuji GW690 series (6x9 medium format, 90mm f3.5) actually gives you a larger frame than the XPan. The GW690 and the XPan 90mm f4 share the same 1-meter minimum focus distance too. If I really want extreme wide panoramic coverage, the Fuji GW690III is the safer bet — it's fully mechanical, which is reassuring in a way the all-electronic XPan never could be.

I'd been looking at the XPan body dimensions and thinking it would be around 600 or 700 grams. What I'd forgotten was that lenses have weight too. Body alone: 720g. Lenses:

• 45mm f4: 235g (955g with body)
• 30mm f5.6: 310g (1,030g with body)
• 90mm f4: 365g (1,085g with body)

At close to a kilogram, the XPan was never going to be the pocket-sized panoramic camera I'd imagined. How did I get this so wrong for so long?

Congratulations to me: 200,000 NTD saved. Fire's out.

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This roll was shot in late August 2025, while I was staying at the hospital with my mom during her surgery. I slept there for a few nights — not particularly well — but she was discharged quickly, so it wasn't as rough as it could have been. The hardest part was honestly just not having a proper desk anywhere in the hospital to work at.

Wishing everyone good health — yours and your family's.

During those hospital days, I did something a little wild: I bought two Ricoh GR21s (21mm f3.5) online. Yes, two. The seller was listing them as a pair, and since I couldn't tell which one was in better condition, I bought both — figuring I could return whichever had issues. Online returns have a deadline, and since I was stuck at the hospital when they arrived at home, I seized a window one evening when I needed to go back to do laundry and grab fresh clothes. I rushed home, pulled out the GR21s, did a quick check, went out and shot an entire 36-exposure roll in under an hour, then dropped it straight at the lab. I wanted results fast enough to decide whether to return anything.

The first GR21 came back clean. Then I ordered a second one separately — and that one turned out fine too. So now I have two GR21s sitting in the dry cabinet.

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#1
Rushing home from the hospital, I found my son deep into a seriously impressive Lego build (set 76968). The structure was complicated enough that he had both the paper instructions and the iPad version open at the same time.

 

#2
My mom had her surgery at NTU Cancer Center, which sits right next to my alma mater, NTUST, in Gongguan. Riding my scooter over there felt immediately familiar — everything pretty much the same as I remembered.

 

#3
View from the hospital room window.

 

#4
A double room. The other bed was empty.

 

#5
NTU Cancer Center's full name is the National Taiwan University Hospital Cancer Center Branch. We're genuinely lucky to have access to facilities like this — a lot of that is owed to the generosity of Foxconn founder Terry Gou.

 

#6
My mom had just had her IV put in and it was bleeding slightly at the site. Something instinctive made me reach for the camera first. Looking back, this is the frame from the whole roll that hits me hardest every time — maybe that's what photojournalism is actually about.

 

#7
Honestly, surgery always carries risk when you're older — and no matter how confident I felt about things going smoothly, the thought crossed my mind: what if this is our last stretch of time together? I asked my mom if I could take her photo. She took off her mask and let me lead her to the window, where the light was beautiful. I turned on the Nikon AD3's date imprint function and captured August 25 — the camera displayed 1995, but I know it was 2025.

 

#8
The atrium lighting at NTU Cancer Center is beautifully designed. From a distance it reads as a pair of wings in flight. Up close, it becomes leaves — a symbol of life.

 

#9
Cancer is still widely thought of as a death sentence, and everyone who walks into this place carries that weight. In that context, anything that offers a sense of hope or confidence matters — I genuinely believe mental state plays a real role in how the body responds to treatment, and whether it can find a way to coexist with, or overcome, the disease.

 

#10
My mom went into the operating room. The surgery went smoothly.

 

#11
On the way out of the hospital. I think cell towers deserve more respect than they get — they're the silent guardians of urban connectivity, and life without a signal is genuinely unthinkable these days.

 

#12
Stopped by Violet Color on the way to pick up the previous roll — the Baby Rolleiflex 4x4.

 

#13
Dusk — flash covered with my hand.

 

#14
Dusk — flash off entirely. The colors are so much better without it, aren't they?

 

#15
Catching the sky turn blue — magic hour.

 

#16
A long time ago, when my dad was still around, I once rode my scooter to this spot to bring him water. He was doing electrical work nearby, and the heat had gotten to him — drenched in sweat, he'd run out of water. I handed it to him and he drank deeply. That was the first time I saw my father at work on a job site up close. He's been gone ten years now, but I still think of that moment whenever I pass through here.

 

#17
Zhongshan District, Taipei. Heading to a client's office.

 

#18
Haven't ridden through central Taipei in a while.

 

#19
The food court at NTU Cancer Center.

 

#20
Got up early at the hospital one morning and went downstairs to grab breakfast. Nothing was open yet.

 

#21
The other side of the hospital building — you can see some very old low-rise houses that have clearly been there for decades.

 

#22
Working from the hospital lounge area, laptop open on the couch.

 

#23
The hillside on the other side of the hospital.

 

#24
Overheard a tour guide telling some foreign visitors that these were palm trees. Wait — aren't those coconut trees?

 

#25
Passing through Huaining Street in Taipei. I've since forgotten the exact context of this shot.

 

#26
Nikon AD3 35mm f2.8 self-portrait test.

 

#27
I used to get my scooter repaired around here back in university. Good memories.

 

#28
Working near Taipei 101 today. Watched a lot of tourists stopping to photograph this sculpture.

 

That's the full roll — Nikon AD3 35mm f2.8 with Kodak UltraMax 400. Thanks for reading.