35mm

I recently have rekindled my interest in photography, but in a whole new way.  About a year ago I asked Dad if I could borrow his old Pentax 35mm film SLR cameras after seeing a blogger who shoots with vintage film cameras.  I was really taken with the natural colors and the softer almost dreamy nature of the film shots.  There is something about them I can't quite put my finger on.  They have a warmth that it seems like it's harder to capture in digital shots. I suppose it is the same analog quality that draws many an audiophile to still listen to an old collection of records while MP3s and music downloads are more ubiquitous than ever.




I look at a lot of photography online through photo sharing sites looking for inspirations and getting ideas. Something I've noticed over the years, and have tried to achieve in my own shots is sharpness in a image.  Digital cameras have moved up in leaps and bounds with 20MP and larger sensors becoming more and more mainstream.  It really seems to be the most sought after qualities are high megapixels and sensor sizes.  Professional photographers have pretty much left film in the dust finally.  They were the last holdouts and even they have moved away from film.  It's true that in most digital shots in 21st century it seems the picture quality is much sharper than in film shots.  This is especially true of lower quality films at higher ISO ratings.  But recently it seems like things have changed a bit.  There is an emergence of instant photo share thorough forums like Instagram and Twitter.  You take a perfect sharp digital image and then you process it through a series of filters to give it a vintage or Holga look sometimes even adding borders to make it look like film.

What I'm realizing, though, is that if the trend in photography is to transform digital images a filter them to make them look more "vintage" or "retro" why not go back to the original analog medium itself?

And this brings me back to Dad's old cameras.  I bought some inexpensive 35mm film and after a few wasted rolls due my own ignorance on film loading I've got a few film images to share.


These are all completely unprocessed straight from the negative scans.  I feel like they have sort of a warm and enchanting quality.  Claire's skin tones look natural and not washed out.  I love how you get a sense of the lighting in our dark house during the long winter nights.

What I'm appreciating also about photographing with film is how it's making me so much choosier before depressing that shutter button. There's no "hip shooting" or burst shots.  I have to be patient and wait for just the right face or wait for a smile and then depress that shutter and hope it all worked out.  I can't check the shot instantly and see how it turned out.  It's such a strange feeling.

Another thing that's making me really enjoy film photography is the relative simplicity of it all.  I don't have to worry about auto focus settings, white balance, memory cards, files sizes, and shooting modes.  I look at my light meter, adjust my focus, compose my shot, squeeze the shutter and that's that!  No instant upload to Facebook, though and I can't tag my friends!




So what do you think?  Am I crazy, weird, and eccentric for getting back in to a technology that is becoming more and more obsolete as the years pass or is there really something special about film photography?  Perhaps film is now becoming the medium for artists, hipsters and eccentrics.  I've got about 5 more rolls to play with so we'll see how everything turns out.

Thanks for reading my ramblings on photography.  I hope you enjoyed the photos and I promise, in the next post I'll talk more about the pedestrian things going on in Claire's life.

Love,

Jane