About Us

Ten years, a mountain of exposed film, and countless hours staring at a film scanner (while it scans film at a rate slightly slower than continental drift) gets you this website. It's kind of sad that Trinidad's endemic crime problem, combined with other factors, makes taking pictures a rare event now. As time marches on inexorably, the pictures on Trinidad Dreamscape remain frozen in time; a glimpse of a dreamscape.

- Dr. Rory Roopnarine, 2008.

Technical Note

We do not use digital cameras; we are a 'film only' website (read why). We use all manner of film and cameras. Our main camera, for example, uses single film sheets (negatives) each the size of a typical 8x10" print from your local photolab. Some of our cameras are more than forty years old, while others are more modern. We mostly use highly saturated slide films from Kodak and Fuji for our colour pictures. Our black and white pictures are a mix of films from Ilford and Kodak. All of our pictures, both colour and monochrome, are developed in our darkroom, that is, in the shower. Black and white processing is easy whereas colour processing requires much more precision, and is quite arduous. Producing our pictures this way may be hard work, but there is the satisfaction of knowing that we control every stage of the picture-making process, and it is almost a magical moment when a perfect slide emerges from the dark.

Trinidad Dreamscape does not enhance colour photographs in Photoshop. Web pictures closely match the original slides. What you see on our website are what our cameras saw when the pictures were taken, and we have the slides to prove it.

Equipment we use

Here's the list for all you geeks!

Large format

Arca-Swiss 4x5 F-Metric Large Format Camera
Arca-Swiss 8x10 F-Metric Large Format Camera
Fujinon A 240mm lens
Rodenstock 150mm Apo Sironar S Lens
Fidelity Filmholders 8x10
Kodak ReadyLoad holder

Medium format

Rolleiflex 6000 system / Zeiss lenses
Pentax 645
Pentax 75mm Lens
Mamiya C220 Twin Lens Reflex

35mm format

Canon EOS 3 with PB-E2 Booster and manual focusing screen
Canon EF 50mm F2.5 macro lens
Canon EF 24mm F2.8 lens
Olympus OM-2N with 50mm, 75-150mm, 300mm Zuiko lenses
Olympus Stylus Epic Point & Shoot

Other Stuff

Gossen Starlite multifunction lightmeter
Cokin Filter System with Cokin and Singh-Ray filters
Ebony Dark cloth
Toyo 4X focusing loupe
Lowepro Phototrekker AW II camera bag
Gitzo 1228 Mk II Reporter CF tripod with a modified A-S B1 ballhead

Cameras we once owned which were used to produce some of the photographs on this site

Rollei 6008 Integral
Voigtlander Bessa R rangefinder
Canon EOS 5
Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel