My First Film Experience

The title is probably slightly misleading, I used to photograph with a film camera all the time when I was little, it was like an awesome pink and purple brick with a wrist strap attached to it that had a very particular smell. Still not sure how it could have such a distinct smell but it did and it travelled very many places with me capturing all the things my tiny girl brain thought were worth capturing. Apparently a Winnie-the-Pooh pillow was one of those things. Children, they work in mysterious ways.

However, as groundbreaking as disposable/point and shoots are with their picture quality, I thought it would be great to try using an SLR film camera just because I have always shot digital ever since I woke up and thought "I want to be a photographer." There is one very tiny minor issue I have with digital cameras which is that the display will not necessarily show you the true exposure of the photo you've taken for varying different reasons. The LCD brightness changes from model to model and you can manually alter it yourself as well. If you work in bright sunlight the screen can appear pitch black (which happened to me at a recent event, every photo looked under exposed until I stepped inside and they were actually fine) and finally I fell into a habit of relying on the review image to adjust my camera settings...not genius!

At this point my friend offered to lend me his Nikon F-301 for a while, the 'while' now turning into 2 years, so that I didn't have an image to rely on and just had to use good old fashioned photography smarts to correctly expose and focus images. As this was a first attempt and a simple test of my shooting abilities I bought a cheap roll of film from a pound shop and spent the next 2 years gradually taking photos with it. 

The fact it took me 2 years to fill one roll of film, which was only 24 exposures clearly shows an ongoing love affair with digital, and to be quite honest I am in no way converted to the dark(room) side. See what I did there? The images I got from it still aren't all that great either, there are a couple more arty shots, some stereotypical soft focus flower photos and pretty much the rest of the roll was used to photograph the horses. Therefore I am doubtful that using a film camera did anything to really improve my technical skills as I wasn't committed enough to making the most of having the camera and didn't shoot regularly with it at all but it did definitely alter my philosophy towards shooting. I became incredibly selective about what I took photos of and tried to stick to one frame for each thing I wanted a shot of and having to be sure everything is perfect in camera before getting the image. 
 

To conclude, a 35mm print is something that I adore, I always have loved how film turns out and the mystery of forgetting what was on the roll in between the instant you clicked the shutter and the moment you get your prints back but I still have an overriding fondness for the power of digital.