Back to the Future… or how I returned to film roll again.
At one time I was glad that digital photography became available to me. I bought Nikon D3100 a budget DSLR camera in a kit with a Nikkor 28-105mm, AF lens and that was enough to create a family photo archive “for memory” and for my own development in this challenging area of creativity.
Over time, automated settings became annoying. They did not give me the opportunity to express what I wanted – the way I see certain moments in life did not coincide with the resulting photo. Then I decided to find a good course in photography in order to understand the intricacies of the technical stuffing of the camera and, perhaps, to understand some stylistic photography techniques.
John Greengo taught the most excellent course for beginners. I watched it with great interest and learned a lot from it. The main difference in the shooting technique after the course was that I forgot about the semi-automatic modes of the camera and shot mainly in aperture priority mode (or simply A on the mode wheel).
I still have my D3100 and it is in working condition. I recently bought a new used 12-28mm lens for it. This gave me the ability to shoot landscapes from a wide angle without losing the geometry of the frame. And also, it has become easier to shoot various events where a large angle is needed (usually crowded or you need people in the frame to be in full growth).
But recently, a friend of mine said that he took up developing the film and scanning it himself. Thus I missed the moment when he started using film in general.
The most interesting thing is that about two years ago I bought a Canon AE-1 film camera with a 50mm lens on sale. And I thought he was out of order. Everything turned out to be much simpler – I just had to insert the battery. And that’s it! The device turned out to be working and I took it with me on our trip to Minnesota. (The first photo for this text is a Canon AE-1 photo of Lake Superior on Kodak Gold 200 film.)
Developing and scanning can also be done fairly quickly. I used a service recommended by a friend of mine. TheDarkRoom is located in California. But mail reaches them quickly, up to 5 days.
Our family will be heading to Mohonk, NY soon for a week where I plan to shoot more landscapes and portraits on film. For landscapes, I would like to purchase from my friend another lens for my film camera – 28 mm. It’s good that he decided to get rid of his Canon camera with all the lenses!
I will also try shooting on standard 120 film. This is generally a new type of film for me. Let’s see what will happen!
