A week in Istria, one roll a day
The idea was simple: one week in Istria, one roll of 36 exposures per day, no more. If a roll ran out at lunch, the afternoon was for looking, not shooting. I wanted to see whether a hard limit would make me slower and more careful, or just anxious.
I stayed in Motovun for the first four nights and in Rovinj for the last three. Buses between the hill towns are rare outside summer, so most days started with a long walk down the hill and ended with a longer walk back up.
Day one to three
The first day went exactly as planned. I shot the fog in the Mirna valley in the morning, waited a full hour for a tractor to cross a field, and finished the roll at dusk with three frames left for the town gate. On day two I was almost too careful and came back with eleven unexposed frames, which I finished on the empty car park because it felt wasteful not to.
Day three is where I broke the rule. A wedding party came out of the church in Grožnjan just as my roll ended, and I loaded a second one. I don't regret it. The frames are not great, but the grandmother in the doorway is the best portrait of the trip.
What the limit actually changed
I metered more carefully. With only 36 frames I stopped bracketing "just in case" and started trusting the meter, which meant fewer wasted frames and, oddly, fewer underexposed ones. I also walked further before raising the camera at all.
The rolls from Rovinj are weaker. The town is beautiful, but it is also the most photographed place on the coast, and I kept catching myself composing postcards. The best frames from those days are of laundry, cats and a man fixing a boat engine who did not want to be in the picture, so he isn't.
Seven rolls, about two hundred and fifty frames, maybe fifteen I would print. That is a better ratio than any trip where I shot without a limit.
Development notes are in the HP5 post; I used the same times as always, with one minute extra for the foggy morning rolls.