Argentina & Chile Holiday

It had roughly been 2 to 3 years since we had travelled overseas due to you know what. So we decided we should take a trip when school finishes at the end of 2022, Seb would have finished high school at that stage and Lucas would have finished for the year. Conveniently both work for my wife and I shuts down at the end of the year for roughly a week and a half.

So the question was where do we go?

So i initially thought Japan again (can never over do Japan), but because it will likely be our last trip overseas with Seb due to the fact that a 17 year old generally doesnt want to do anything with their parents for any amount of extended time i thought why not take a trip to South America and introduce my side of the family to my kids who they have never met and to my father who non of them have ever met. Then also head over to see my wifes family.

So it was decided, we spend 9 or so days in Argentina and the rest in Chile were we can also do some sight seeing.

Before we get on with the trip we need to talk about the camera gear i was taking with me of course, this is more about the photography than my poor story telling skills.

I wanted to keep it reasonably light so i took my Contax S2b with my Carl Zeiss Distagon 35mm F2.8 on the film side of things and my new to you Fujifilm X-Pro3 (purchased Nov 2021). With my X-Pro3 i took my Fujifilm 27mm f2.8, 35mm f1.4, 16mm f1.4 and 56mm f1.2. Although the lens that was on the camera the most was my 27mm f2.8 pancake, it just made the camera so much more compact. This also confirms that i prefer the 35mm full frame focal length (23mm on an APSC sensor), i think its the perfect all round lens for travel. I found the 27mm a tad too cropped in and i figure the 23mm f1.4 will get added to my lens arsenal very soon. But the 27mm was the closest to that focal length in my lens bag which is likely why it sat on the camera for most of the trip.

Fujifilm X-Pro3 with the 27mm f2.8 while on a river crossing in Castro

Without going too deep into the X-Pro3, one of the things ive loved is the recipes you can create with the various simulations. Of course if you have a Fujifilm you need to go to fujixweekly and get started with some recipes. Since i got the body ive been playing with 2 recipes from fujixweekly which is the Kodak Tri-X (very close to the real thing) and a Nostalgia recipe which i came across on Youtube with iamtongue tweaked version of a fujixweekly recipe. Ive been playing with these recipes for the last 6 months and made slight tweaks and reached a point that im happy with.

All the images youll see in this blog entry are jpg’s made with these recipes, slight tweaks like contrast and brightness in post but thats about it.

Here are my tweaked recipes:

Kodak Tri-X 400
- Film Simulation: Acros + G filter
- Grain Effect: Strong Large
- Color Chrome Effect: Strong
- Color Chrome FX Blue: Off
- White Balance: Daylight - R:9, B:-9
- Dynamic Range: DR100
- D Rand Priority: Off
- Tone Curve: H:0, S:+2
- Sharpness: -1
- Noise Reduction: -4
- Clarity: +4
- Exposure Compensation: +1
- ISO: 1600+

Nostalgia
- Film Simulation: Classic Chrome
- Grain Effect: Strong Large
- Color Chrome Effect: Strong
- Color Chrome FX Blue: Strong
- White Balance: Auto - R:2, B:-5
- Dynamic Range: DR200
- D Rand Priority: Off
- Tone Curve: H:-1, S:-1
- Color: +2
- Sharpness: -1
- Noise Reduction: -4
- Clarity: +2
- Exposure Compensation: +1
- ISO: 1600+

Back to the trip, we flew into Santiago from Sydney as there is no direct flight to Buenos Aires with Qantas, and from there we flew to Buenos Aires.

Now this wasnt long after Argentina won the World Cup and the Argentinian team was due to arrive in Argentina. Lucky for us we arrived in Buenos Aires the day after the team arrived, otherwise it would have been chaos trying to get anywhere.

Sample jersey released after Argentina won the World Cup (not for sale unfortunately).

Jetlag hits hard for those of us traveling to South America from Australia as your meant to be sleeping when your awake and awake when your meant to be sleeping. The first morning in Buenos Aires was an early start.

View from our Airbnb.

Lucas looking over Buenos Aires.

As you can imagine after not seeing my family in Argentina for 17 years and some for 30, i spent most of my time catching up with them and not doing much sight seeing. Here is a mix of some of my fave pics from Argentina. In all honesty i should have taken way more pictures in Argentina but i let everyones comments get to me thinking i was going to get my camera stolen around every corner. In the end i physced myself out and didnt end up taking it with me many places.

Chile was where we could explore a bit more, here are some of my favourite randoms in Santiago after we arrived from Buenos Aires.

The next part of the trip we head down to the south of Chile, this starts off with us taking a flight to Puerto Montt very early in the morning and then drive 4 hours to Cucoa. During the 6 days we spent in the south of Chile we explored various attractions in Castro, Cucoa, Quellon and Puerto Montt. Here are some of my faves from that part of the trip.

When we got back from the south of Chile we drove to Valparaiso to explore a bit, here are some of my faves from that day.

Here are some of my favourite randoms from around Santiago.

Cant be in Santiago and not go to Cerro San Cristobal to see Santiago, you need rain for it to clear up the views of all the smog but still nice to get up there.

Lastly here are some of the final randoms i enjoyed from Santiago.

I did mention that i took my film camera with me, i only shot 1 roll with it which was a roll of Kodak Portra 400. I havent been keeping my film in the fridge and i think it may have deteriated over time, or im just severly under exposing the images. Anyway enough excuses, here are my faves from that roll.

All in all it was a great trip, happy i got to see my family and my wifes family and was great to see the south of Chile.

Even more stoked on the Fujifilm X-Pro3 and absolutely loving the Nostalgia and Tri-X recipes. Will hopefully put together another blog post of my experience with the X-Pro3 so far and share some of my favourite images taken with it.

For some other pics from the trip check out my saved Instagram highlights and posts.

Thanks for visiting.