Iceland on film (June 2026 edition)

My Iceland film photo collection is getting pretty good! By which I mean that this is my fourth set of film photos of Iceland and it’s also possibly the best set so far. Winter 2024 was in black and white and not nearly as high-contrast as I dreamed. Summer 2025 was with my grandad’s massive vintage SLR and although they weren’t bad, they weren’t as good as they should have been from a camera like that. Summer 2023 wasn’t bad but you could never quite forget they were from a film camera. And now we have June 2026! This is the same roll of film that provided the first half of the Denmark photos and while they’re not quite as good as the Denmark photos, they’re not bad.

Hallgrimskirkja, the big church shaped like a space shuttle seen from a little distance with leaves framing it.

Skolavordustigur, Reykjavik's Rainbow Street but just too far down to see the colours. There are people gathered because the Independence Day parade is on its way down.

Ok, central Reykjavik first. Two different but equally majestic views of Hallgrímskirkja and two views of the shopping streets below. They’re a little bit… filmy but they’re by far the best pictures I’ve ever taken of Reykjavik.

A selfie in my yellow hoodie with the stainless steel stylised Viking ship on the shore.

The stone block sea defences along the seafront in Reykjavik with some fairly tall - for Iceland - grey tower blocks opposite.

Down by the seafront, starring Esja, Harpa and Sólfar. Esja is Reykjavik’s mountain, Harpa is the glass conference centre and Sólfar is the Sun Voyager, the stylised Viking ship. They’re not bad. They’re maybe not quite as good as the Denmark pictures but they’re pretty good compared to most of my other Iceland pictures and especially compared to my last lot of Reykjavik photos, which are the black and white winter ones.

The Tjornin, Reykjavik's City Pond on a grey evening at 9 at night, or maybe even later.

A selfie outside the Tjornin-side theatre. I'm wearing a yellow jumper and this one is definitely a little tinted from the late evening.

Part of my reason for being in Iceland in the first place was to see a show at Tjarnabio, the theatre on the edge of Tjörnin, Reykjavik’s City Pond. It’s one of my favourite places to just be, especially on the other side where all the geese and swans are swimming and honking and wandering around. These are taken in the interval, so it’s somewhere between 9pm and 9.30, which would be far too late at night for a film camera normally but this is June in Iceland, a couple of days before midsummer and about as light at night as it gets. Even so, you can see the greenish tinge over me in the selfie.

A view down over Reykjavik from Perlan, the water storage tanks turned exhibition.

A third view but this time from the car park rather than the viewing platform.

And the last three, views from Perlan, the weird-looking thing on top of a hill that used to be a water storage facility and now houses nature exhibitions in at least two of the six tanks. You can go up on top of the tanks on the 360 viewing platform and look out over Reykjavik. I think the best of these three is the middle one, the one taken from the car park as I sat and sketched things before going in for 12pm booking but they’re all pretty good.

And that’s Iceland on film! I’m still debating whether to bother taking the camera on my next big trip – it’s in November and a chunk of it is going to be on a train so it might be a bit dark. On the other hand, it might be an opportunity to have a go at ISO 800, which is something I’ve never tried before.