I have gone on a few camping trips this year, with various cameras…and in various weather conditions. One thing I did take with me on each trip, was a ‘tiny’ film camera. To me, tiny means something pocketable.

For the first two trips, I took a Pentax Auto 110, loaded with Lomo Orca 110. I didn’t finish it on the first trip to Sudbury, so I ended up taking it to Bamburgh, with a side trip to Parwich and even a few shots at Wentworth Castle Gardens. I made the typical ‘me’ mistake of taking too many cameras on my journeys, so it took me longer to finish the film than I thought. As for the camera, you can’t get any smaller for an SLR; it is regarded as the world’s smallest. I wanted a camera I could fit in my pocket as I would be cycling around a bit.

The Pentax is very easy to use, and the results are surprisingly good. The main issue is that the choice of available film is very small. I chose Orca as I could develop it at home. Here are my results:

The last camping trip I went on was to Skye in Scotland. The weather was awful. It was windy, rainy, and misty. It was so bad that my tent split a pole and duct tape was needed to see the trip out. Again, I wanted to take a small camera that I could fit in my pocket, this time to keep it drier. For this trip, I decided to take the Rollei 35T as it has a connection to mountainous regions and could easily fit in my pocket. The larger negative size of 35mm, would hopefully give better results than the Pentax. Due to the clouds, I really wish I had taken at least one filter, an ND grad. But I had recently lent my whole filter box to a friend without foresight to save one of those. I have since bought one to add to the collection and keep it in my bag.

I used it as my main camera and finished two full rolls of bulk-rolled film. One was Fomapan 100, the other was expired HP5. Here are the results:

Fomapan 100

HP5, expired 2007

At the first location of this set, Neist Point, I fell down the steep path and hurt my ankle, which was already inflamed from falling over my tent rope, rushing to put it up in the rain. As you can see, it was very misty and slippery. I was very pleased the Rollei was so small, as it was protected deep in my pocket, not a normal-sized SLR around my neck.

I loved all the trips this year. I hope to make one more this season, as I want to test my newly repaired tent. I have since replaced the pole and retaped the seams. What tiny camera should I take on that trip?