First Year of Film
As a digital photographer, this was a fresh and a bit of a daunting experience. I've enjoyed every moment of learning film and I'm looking forward to more years to come.
I first got into film after I took a film development class in my final years of college. Being an upcoming photographer and an art major, I wanted to improve my knowledge on the subject of film photography. However, when I took the class I was unable to get the full experience out of it as it was all online, so I wasn’t able to use the darkroom lab to develop anything. But that wouldn’t stop me from falling down this rabbit hole.
I initially bought my film camera in September 2022. It was a Minolta X-700 that I got through an auction. It came with the camera, 3 lenses, the strap and a couple filters for a small price of $100. I've since swapped out the strap and added the clips to work with my Peak Design Slide Lite. The lenses were the 50mm kit lens, a Tokina 28-80 f/3.5-4.5, and Tokina 70-210 f/4-5.6.
I gave the camera and the lenses a quick cleaning to remove all the dirt and slight smoker scent from them, bought a battery to make sure the internal light meter worked (it did), and it was ready to go.
Starting out on my first roll was Fuji Superia 400. It was the cheapest 3 pack in my area at a local Urban Outfitters, before I found my current film place later on. I popped the roll into my Minolta X-700 and was ready to go out shooting.
However, I felt like a newbie again. Not only was I not used to having a limited number of shots, but I didn’t know how to read the internal light meter in the camera, I couldn’t tell if my shot was in focus or not right off the bat. This experience was nothing like before while shooting. It gave me the realization of how much we take for granted in our digital cameras with all the different settings available to us.
I had taken my film camera with me on a family adventure to Tucson, Arizona. Not only did I bring my camera, but I decided to bring some expired film that I was not used to shooting. I figured this would be a good time to not only get some nice shots of the scenery, but to test expired film and see what the differences would have been.
The first set of images were during our time to Tombstone, famous for its history of mining and old western figures such as Billy the Kid. The town still booms throughout the year with its tourism, but not nearly as much without its ability to continue mining.
This second set of images are from the other roll that was one year younger, but still expired. The first two images were during the Arizona trip while the second two were during an event I had attended shortly after we came back. Although the film produced a very interesting aesthetic to them with this interesting flower pattern, I wish I had pushed the film maybe 1-2 stops just to get some more light onto them.
My second roll of expired film was not used during my Arizona trip, but was used during a day trip with my girlfriend. We had gone out to Anaheim to walk around and enjoy the day and decided to go to a local restaurant to grab some lunch. Before we went out though, we stopped by my film developer lab and I brought up that I had another expired roll. She had informed me to make sure not to shoot anything important such as a wedding on it just in case. So I instead did some street photography with it, and they turned out better than I thought they would. I wholeheartedly was expecting a similar effect as the previous expired roll since they were stored right next to each other for the same amount of time.
It would take some time to get used to shooting film, but after a handful of rolls I would eventually get the hang of what I enjoy in my film shots. This next set of images are a range of a couple different rolls, but all are ones that I would consider being my better shots that I had taken throughout the year.
Overall, I have enjoyed my time this past year learning film photography and getting a better understanding of what I’m shooting, manually dialing in my settings and getting excited for the results instead of seeing them right away. Having the patience to see what I captured later on after the moment has passed makes it all the better once I know for certain that I did capture the moment instead of it being just a memory in the brain.
I do think the next step is going to be going back to retake the film class and get a better understanding on developing in a darkroom myself. I would like to learn this skill so that I can save a bit of money and develop my film on my own, as prices for developing are beginning to jump along with the prices of film itself. Also this would just be a fun thing to learn as well.
But remember… pick up your camera and just go shoot. Moments lay everywhere in our lives, should it be captured through digital or film.
My work that has been shown here can be seen in my portfolio. Some works that have been shown are also available for prints through my link down below if you are interested in that as well.
Thank you for reading this and I hope you will stick around for more blogs to come!
Thank you for reading this and I hope you will stick around for more blogs to come!
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Embrace The Journey
Embrace The Journey
Thank you for checking out this project and my other work! If you wish to support me please check out any of the links below. All kinds of appreciation is welcomed!
Website/contact: https://www.kws.photography/
Print Store: https://kwsphotography.darkroom.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/k.w.s.photography
All other links: https://linktr.ee/KWSPhotography
