35mm Photography
Tue 01 November, 2011
I love taking photos, and most people who know me have seen my freakishly large camera collection.
My first digital camera was some clunky Kodak thing I bought from eBay about 10 years ago (back then I used Linux and gphoto2 to get photos off it, but that's another very nerdy story). Since then I must've bought 4 or 5 digital cameras over the years, and I even got a fancy Canon 400D with some expensive lenses too.
But I don't use digital cameras any longer, I use 35mm film cameras. Some of these are pretty old because a lot of the ones I've grown to love aren't made any more, and some of the photos that I love the most were taken on cameras that are older than I am!
Agfa Precisa 100 | Olympus XA Grassy fields, shot into the sun — somewhere in England
Sometimes people look a bit surprised when I pull out a camera that looks like something their mum might have used in the late 1980s. I guess they'll think I'm either:
- a hipster
- clueless, or
- somewhere between a a weirdo or an enthusiast
Maybe none of those, it's hard to tell.
But I'll tell you why I switched, and why I don't think I'll ever go back to shooting digital photographs regularly:
Shooting on film is magical!
It is! It changed the way I take photos into something I find much more fun and fascinating. It's like being a kid again - you get this head-scratching sense of wonder at how it works, and why it worked that time but less so this time, etc.
There's this constant sense of experimentation. Light seems to play on film so much more dramatically than on digital, colours seem more memorable, and one frame to the next can turn out totally different.
Also, I can logically work out how digital cameras work because I know how computers work. A huge light sensor, RGB, etc. But a film camera? Film? WTF is it? How does this strip of plastic turn out these beautiful images when dunked in the right chemicals for just the right amount of time?
See - magic!
Ilford XP400 | Olympus XA2 Arcade in Lisbon, and the beautiful Surfcastle
Ektar 100 | Yashica T4 Motorbike with chrome trim, parked outside Bar da Praia, Baleal, Portugal
I stopped over-thinking, because shooting on film won't let you over-think. No more taking 5 shots of the same scene and standing there flicking through picking the best one in the middle of the street or restaurant.
You point, click, and put the camera away.
Then, 3 weeks later when you finally remember to take the film to be developed, you get these images that you'd mostly forgotten taking.
Forgotten moments, back in your hands.