Breaking out the film

Yes you read that right, Film in this digital age.

I order some Kodak Tri-X and breaking out the old 35 mm camera. Thinking of using my Canon AE-1 (the photos on this blog post are not mine by the way).

Why you might ask the use of film, for fun and for a refresher.

I believe if you want to teach a person how to use a Camera an older 35mm is the best teaching tool.  You can’t have a point and shoot mentality here. We live in a society of instant gratification and the older 35mm cameras are the complete opposite of that. Unlike a digital you can’t take a photo, review the histogram, review your composition, re-adjust your composition, try a different f/stop and shutter speed combo, check you histogram again, preview your photos and see if you got the shot the way you intended. Then if you want, switch that ISO for the next photo.

The film camera makes you think about the scene you taking a little more. You don’t want to waste film do you?  You think about your shutter speed a little more, think about that f/stop, and actually use that depth of field scale on your lens.  You realize how much the shutter speed and aperture setting work together (no aperture / shutter priority modes here). Think about your ISO and how it will affect you photos because once that film is in, it is in to the end of the roll.  You take the photos, process or have it processed, then wait to see the results, days maybe weeks later. No instant gratification here. Remember the excitement of the image appearing on the paper as you develop it or that excitement as you opened the package from the mail?

I think with film you look at things a little differently, you think if it is worth photographing.

Example: This weekend we took some interior photos for a client of a newly constructed building.  As I walked around and thought what the client might want, I took a photo of this, of that. Some rooms looked similar but I took a photo of it in case I liked the lighting better.  Then come home and whittle down the best captures that day in Lightroom. Pixels are free. In the film days it was a little different process, I would think if I really needed a photo of that space of not. Film is not free.

Why I am I going to shot some film? For fun, shooting film is fun and you get that excitement when the photos arrive from the developer. For a refresher, a reboot for my brain if you will, hoping it will refresh my brain about seeing things differently and really getting back to thinking more about the shot itself.

So if you want to have some fun and need a refresher, get out the film camera.