Switzerland in analogue

Since it’s a trend in 2026, I’m going along with this whole “analogue” thing but it’s just film photos under a new name, and if you haven’t been around here before, I have an entire tag for the photos I’ve been taking on 35mm film over the last nearly seven years, so this isn’t new. For the record, this weekend was shot on 24-exposure ISO 400 Kodak UltraMax with my clattery plastic Kodak M35 camera and it’s always a gamble what you’ll get back. I actually managed 25 photos, of which I can’t make out what one is supposed to be and another nine are definitely less than optimal. But that leaves 15 that are acceptable! That’s not bad for a winter batch, and probably better than I’d have managed if I’d gone for the Kodak Gold 200 that was also looking accusingly at me in the days before I packed.

A grainy but not terrible picture of me on a train, wearing a bright pink t-shirt.

First up, me on the train on the way to Lausanne and this isn’t too bad considering I’m inside, because this train has big windows which is giving just enough light for the film to do its thing. You forget how much light film photos need because digital cameras and phones are really adaptable. Film is not forgiving. But this isn’t bad. There’s a fun side-lighting effect on my face and the pink is pretty vivid for the grainy brown-ness of the photo.

A crowd of people gathered in front of Lausanne's cathedral, which is surrounded by bare trees.

I’m still not entirely sure whether I should have taken this photo but it didn’t disturb anyone or anything. It’s the minute’s silence for the victims of the Crans-Montana fire – not the actual minute, obviously, but during the gathering in the ten minutes leading up to it, when it struck me that there were a lot of people who’d come to the cathedral specifically to observe this silence and that they were being incredibly quiet even before it had started – anywhere else, a crowd like that would have been talking or muttering and otherwise generating a certain amount of noise and Lausanne just… didn’t.

A grainy, brown, low-quality picture of Lausanne's cathedral silhouetted against the sky with the pillars of the Bessieres bridge in the foreground.

This is one of the not-great ones. I think this must have been the next morning and I didn’t realise it was so dark as I was trying to line up the pillars of the Bessières bridge with the cathedral up on its hill, because this is very dark and very grainy. I’ve skipped a street view before this, a city view after and the really mysterious one after that.

A view over Lausanne, the lake and the mountains in the distance as seen from the courtyard outside the cathedral. The city is lightly powdered in snow which wasn't there an hour or so earlier when I arrived at the cathedral.

The city view I skipped over looks just like this but much browner and harder to make out. This is after I’d been in the cathedral and it had snowed wildly, so Lausanne is lightly coated in snow and you can see the snowstorm continuing over the lake. Lausanne is such a 3D city but you don’t really get the effect on film.

A selfie outside the cathedral during the snowstorm. You can make out the snow on the cathedral roof but otherwise, the picture is a lot browner and grainier than I'd like, although you can see the pastel shades of my stripy hat & scarf quite well.

What I had not yet learned – what I didn’t learn until today – is that film photos don’t work terribly well in the snow. What I’m quite pleased with is that it’s quite a successful selfie considering this is a plastic film camera and I have no way of seeing whether I’m pointing it the right way.

Lausanne's streets as seen from a kind of bridge over the lower city. It's in the snow still, so it's bad quality.

This is what I’m talking about when I say that Lausanne is 3D. I’m standing on one bridge and behind me are two others forming a triangle above the streets below but these streets above are also part of a perfectly ordinary bit of city. It’s snowing, so everything’s still brown and grainy and you can see the cathedral crowning the city silhouetted against the snowy sky.

Lausanne's Palace Hotel, a large and visibly expensive hotel still decked out for Christmas. Unfortunately, in the snow, it looks like the last four photos - grainy and brown.

This is Lausanne’s Palace Hotel, which is so eye-catching that it’s one of the few things I took a photo of when I was here as a student 20 years ago. Over a week into January, it’s still decked out in its Christmas finery but you can’t really appreciate that here because it’s snowing heavily and so the photo is pretty brown.

One of the many narrow, winding streets in Lausanne, no doubt packed with designer shops that you can't really see in this picture.

This is the last of the pretty bad ones and it’s one of Lausanne’s many winding streets on the walk down from my hotel to the station. This is later in the day so it’s not snowing anymore but the street is narrow enough and the buildings tall enough that it blocks out just a little too much light for the film to show it off properly.

A view alongside the lakeside looking north at Montreux. This picture has some colour in it!

A picture with some colour! This is the lake shore at Montreux, looking north/west back towards Vevey and Lausanne and it’s not a terrible picture! In fact, compared to the last half dozen, it’s a positively good picture!

A wonderfully moody picture of the lake, the mountains opposite and the clouds being a bit threatening on top of them.

I like this one! Lac Leman wasn’t nearly as threatening or atmospheric as this picture looks but the light is dramatic and the clouds are dramatic and the mountains are dramatic and maybe there’s not all that much colour in it but I guess in real life, it was all blues and greys anyway.

Chateau de Chillon as seen from the path approaching the gatehouse. This one's pretty good - a bit brown but otherwise very clear and well contrasted.

I’m pretty pleased with this one too – this is Chateau de Chillon as I approach it and I love how the brown tendency of the film actually complements this picture, which may be a bit brown but is definitely not too grainy this time.

A slightly grainy picture of the inside of one of Chillon's courtyards.

Ah, we’re back to one that’s not brilliant – it’s brown and grainy but at least it’s fairly obvious what it is, which is one of the courtyards in Chateau de Chillon.

A field of snow and heavy snowy clouds as seen from a station - you can see the tracks and the lines between me and the view.

On the one hand, this was the ideal view to use a film photo on but on the other hand, there was a station and several tracks and bits of railway hardware between me and the view. But at least it’s reasonably white, but I’m putting that down to the reflection off the snow rather than the actual ambient light because I reckon this could have been quite a brown and grainy photo if it hadn’t been snowy.

The station hotel and snowy melted road outside Palezieux station.

This one’s not bad either. This is the station hotel at Palézieux and with the snow gathered at the edges of the wet road, this looked like a really good snowy Alpine village scene.

The station at Palézieux again, this time with the main railway line on the right and the bus waiting to take skiiers out to the villages on the left. The road is less cleared of snow than the road passing the hotel.

And we’re still at Palézieux! This is the view from the mainline platforms on the way to the little train that was going to take me to Bulles and Broc with a bus waiting to take people, mostly skiers, up into the mountains.

Maison Cailler, a chocolate factory that looks more like a four-storey manor house than a factory, painted white and sitting below a blue sky.

I think Maison Cailler actually looks slightly better in this film photo than its digital twin (although I have to step a lot further back with the film camera to get everything in). The film is slightly softer, the colours just slightly muted. The factory looks more creamy and less stark. Yes, on the whole I like this one.

The station at Broc-Chocolaterie - a brown and white chalet housing the station building is on the right and a steep hill with a stone wall holding it back on the left. The train track runs between the two and although the house is probably darker than its digital equivalent, this isn't a bad picture either.

I had about twenty minutes to waste at Broc-Chocolaterie, because I didn’t check the train times before I walked the 100m from the chocolate factory so I thought I’d use one of my film photos on this little scene of the station building, which is so very Swiss, and the snowy hill opposite it. By now, I was on my way to explore Geneva and I knew it would be too dark to take film photos by the time I got there just after 5pm, so I need to use the last few pictures before I get there.

A view of an interesting-looking town from its station. There's a single tall brick tower sticking out of the town which suggests it's somewhere I'd like to explore next time.

Another station, another picture. This is Romont, where I’d getting on the Luzern-Geneva train and the town above the station caught my eye because it’s got at least two round stone towers sticking up. A medieval walled town? Who knows but I might make a detour to it next time I’m in Switzerland.

Another selfie, this one not a bad one. I'm a little more grainy and brown than I would be in digital but it's definitely the best of the lot.

A third selfie and this one is the best of them all. It’s about as close to perfection as you can get in a film photo taken in winter at a railway station. The colours of my hat, scarf and fleece are all reasonably vivid – a little muted, a tiny bit brown and a tiny bit grainy but this is a very acceptable film selfie.

And we finish on yet another station - this time the snowy view taken across a few platforms, tracks and overhead wires towards a snowy town beyond.

And the last picture of the roll is of a station. This time there are at least two platforms and at least three sets of tracks between me and the snowy village I’m actually photographing but the colours are ok, the graininess is within acceptable limits and there’s a snowy Swiss scene.

So this batch had its ups and downs. It was also a bit limited by the places I went – Lausanne is a bit too enclosed and it was a bit too snowy to get good pictures there, I knew there was no point in taking film photos inside Chateau de Chillon or Maison Cailler or during the snowshoeing, which was after dark. Maybe I could have done more pictures down on the lakeshore but they’d get just as repetitive as the railway pictures. Nonetheless, after using an entire roll between May and December 2025, I’m inspired all over again to use the other UltraMax 400 roll on my next winter adventure, which is coming up at February half term. Oh no, you’ll just have to wait and see what that one is.