Film photography is a fantastic was to get into photography but also improve your photography skills due to it’s limitations, the most noticeable difference between digital and film is the switch from a memory card to film canisters, going from being able to shoot 100s of photos in a matter of minutes and delete the ones you don’t have which sounds fantastic, but limiting yourself to a 36 exposure can of film means you really have to think about your shot before you take it as theres no deleting it once it’s taken, the thought process is why I love it so much however there is a lot I have realised between starting and where I am today which I want to share with you now.
The Hipster Effect
Expectation: So you’ve went on Ebay and decided you want to be an old 35mm film camera, maybe like me when I started you heard about film off of a friend or a relative (for me it was my uncle who is a photographer) and you want to try out and experience this new style of photography without colour rendering or any computer processing what so ever, just you and the camera. On the other hand there are lots of people who make the switch to film purely for the aesthetic of owning and being seen with a “retro” camera, clearly it’s old and rare so it must look good right?
Reality: Wrong, for the most part nobody even cares about the camera you own, if you’re taking portraits of them they don’t necessarily care what camera you have in-front of your face as long as you send them some instagram worthy photos of them later, and those who don’t know you and lets say you’re doing a street or architectural shoot, they will start to avoid you like the plague because nobody wants to be on someone else’s camera regardless of what make or model it is. In reality the only people who are going to notice are other people who are into film photography, so if you want a film camera just for the aesthetic, don’t buy a film camera just buy a camera from Fujifilm’s XT line which are digital cameras (good ones as well) with the Film appearance, that way you get the look you want while not putting up with the inconveniences you didn’t account for.
Cost
Expectations: A lot of people assume film photography is incredibly cheap down to the prices of the cameras themselves, for example I can pick up an old professional grade Canon, Nikon or Olympus film camera body for under £200 which is a bargain, even the more prestigious of 35mm film cameras such as the Leica M3 which used can set you back between £1000-£2000 which sounds like a lot, until you realise the Canon 5D mark IV (Canons flagship DSLR) is worth nearly £3000 with lens, and Nikons D5 is worth a minimum £5000 new, don’t get me wrong both of those cameras are incredible but anybody can see those prices are insane.
Reality: Film photography, unlike Digital is a pay as you shoot, what I mean like this is with digital photography you buy your DSLR or Mirrorless camera for anywhere between £300-£5000 and even more, but once you made that purchase you don’t HAVE to spend anymore money if you don’t want to and just stick with the standard kit lens, on the flip side, film photography, yeah you might of bought that Canon AE-1 for £100 but every time you go yo use it a 36 exposure roll of film is anywhere between £5-£10 which doesn’t sound like a lot but trust me it adds up, I tend to bulk buy which means I buy in packs of 10 or 5 instead of singular rolls, this way I keep down the cost per roll.
That it Will Actually Work
Expectation: So you bought your new (old) camera, and you’re over the moon with how it arrived on the surface there are no scratches and no dents in the metal body work, you’ve gone to Boots (or your local drug/Camera store) and picked up a roll of Fujifilm C200, loaded it up, and shot some of the best photos you’ve ever taken and they came back from development looking incredible.
Reality: Now this is a story of mine from last week, I bought an Olympus OM-2 off of Ebay (as you can probably tell from this and my last post I have a love for Olympus cameras) waited a week for it too arrive, I was really eager for it because I was able to haggle the seller down from £110 to £80 which in hindsight should of been my first clue, but I didn’t care I just got a bargain, I loaded up my Fuji C200 film, went to use it it was going well until about 3 photos in….it jammed, I thought “Okay it’s an old camera maybe the gears have seized I’ll leave it and check later” it still wasn’t working, I sent it back to the seller after retrieving my film and the seller wrote back to me telling me “the mechanism for the advance lever had sheared off” and that that he would send me a full refund which was nice of him. So I wasted a week and a roll of film, but now I can just order another one off someone else which is a plus.
In conclusion film photography has it’s ups and downs, it can get really bad and everything goes wrong, but in those moments when everything is running smoothly and nothing is going wrong, it is honestly a wicked experience that I would recomend to anyone interested in photography not just film photography. My goal here isn’t to scare people away from it, but to know what to plan for when they buy that first camera, so they’re not caught of guard like I was.
Thanks for reading!
Casual 35mm 