Sepang South Africa on Film: Canon FX (1964)

Would you still shoot film in 2026?

This is a Canon FX. Canon put it on sale in April 1964, thirty-five years before I was born. It has a light meter on top that you read yourself, a shutter that tops out at 1/1000, and nothing that tells you whether you got the shot.

I took it to Sepang South Africa, about the most ridiculous place in Selangor. Eroded rock spires, orange cliffs, white ground that throws light straight back up at you. On a phone it looks like Malaysia. On film it doesn't look like anywhere.

Camera: Canon FX, 1964
Film: Kodak ColorPlus 200
Place: Sepang South Africa, Selangor
Scans back: 38 frames

The roll

Straight from the lab scan. Frames shot upright are turned the right way; nothing else is edited.

Rock spires rising above scrub at Sepang South Africa, shot on Kodak ColorPlus 200 — FR 19

White and orange eroded spires with a small tree on top, Sepang South Africa on film — FR 21

Pale rock spire against a blue sky, orange boulders below, vertical film frame — FR 20

Orange eroded pillars and a green tree above, vertical film frame — FR 24

A thin orange rock spire against a blue sky — FR 25

Balanced boulder silhouetted against an overexposed sky — FR 23

Dark cliff edge against a bright white sky — FR 22

A single rock pillar on a pink and white mound — FR 29

Rock formations above cracked pale ground under a grey sky — FR 26

Wide pale ground stretching to distant white rock spires — FR 27

Orange cliff face falling to a dusty trail under a deep blue sky — FR 31

The photographer's shadow on a streaked rock wall — FR 35

Silhouetted rock pillars against a cloudy sky — FR 28

Faded wide view of white spires across flat ground — FR 36

Planes over the spires

Stand still long enough out there and a plane crosses the frame. Behind the rocks it's oil palm and low buildings on the horizon, which is the part a phone photo never lets you forget. Film softens it into something older.

A plane crossing the sky above a pink rock outcrop — FR 30

A plane above rocks and oil palms, vertical frame — FR 34

Rocks in the foreground with low buildings on the far horizon — FR 32

Rubble and oil palm under a flat grey sky — FR 33

The frames that didn't make it

Honestly, some came back badly. Underexposed, soft, one almost completely blank. That's the trade: thirty-six attempts, no preview, and the ones that work feel earned in a way a burst of four hundred digital shots never does.

Frame 1, almost completely white from light leaking onto the film — FR 01

Frame 2, a black frame with nothing recorded — FR 02

Frame 5, a night shot with only a few city lights visible — FR 05

Frame 18, underexposed to near black — FR 18

The drive there and back

A highway at dusk heading toward distant hills — FR 09

Motorway traffic under big clouds on the drive home — FR 37

Kuala Lumpur skyline from the motorway on the way back — FR 38

So, would you? Film or phone for a place like this.

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