How Does It Feel To Shoot Film?
Originally Posted Here
So I started shooting with film…
35MM FILM
The process of shooting film has been frustrating, slow. and rewarding all at the same time. It’s allowed me to think before clicking the shutter and ask myself “do I want to capture this photo or is this something that’s not worth capturing?”
Let’s rewind back for a second, and talk about why I even got into film in the first place. For so long, I’ve been shooting digital photos on my phone and on my Nikon D5300, and honestly it’s been great. On my DSLR I shoot with my kit lens and I also shoot with a 40 mm lens that goes to F2.8. But for some reason, I felt like my photos just didn’t feel the way I wanted them to feel even with them being edited and adding in fake grain to my photos. It still was missing something that I was used to in my earlier years of life.
For as long as I could remember, photos and videos have been a part of my life. My mother used them a lot for documenting; family, moments, outings, birthdays, Christmas parties, and regular casual mundane days. For me, I always wanted to carry on that same legacy and hand it down to the future generations.
My mom shot photos with a Canon Shute Shot, and she used Kodak film. I think it was Kodak Gold based on the photos that I’ve seen. A few years ago, I went through the albums and I looked at the photos and I said “Ahh, that’s what’s missing.” It’s the feeling that was missing from my digital photos. The imperfect nature, the random flash shots, the light leaks the smell of the negatives lol.
I remember having to wait until the roll finished in order for me to see the photos that she took. We used to drop them off at Loblaws and they would get them developed within two hours. After two hours, they came hot off the press and we would put them into our photo album.
Fast forward to the present, I found out that my grandmother had an SLR sitting around, not being used. It was pretty much brand new and she didn’t want to give it to me at first until 3 or 4 years later. I finally got it, the Nikon FG with a 50 mm lens F1.8.
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I was finally able to experience what my mom felt when she shot her photos, and now I get to wait for them to be developed. In this digital era, that’s something that’s missing. Everything is in an instant, from microwavable food, to 200+ photos in a minute. There’s no longer that anticipation.
How To Get Photos Developed?
I went to a few places to get my photos developed, but graination seems to be my favourite place to go to when getting my film developed. You can push or pull you’re film, You could pick the scanner you want them to scan it with if you want to convert your developed photos into JPEG so that you’re able to share it with other people, and you could also print them. They get everything done within 48 hours, but you could pay extra to rush your order if you want to.
Some Shots From My First Roll
These shots were taken on the Nikon FG using the 50 mm lens f1.8, and the film of choice was illord HP5 + iso 400. I pushed the film so that I could get more contrast out of it so I turned my ISO to 1600.
The scanner that I chose to scan the photos with was the frontier scanner, which was a mistake because frontier scanners are better for colour photos. Next time I would pick the Noritsu scanner for deeper blacks.
So far the journey has been great and I can’t wait to finish my next roll of film. Currently I have Kodak Ektacolor Pro 400 (aka Portra 400) in my camera. It’s supposed to be a really good colour negative film and it probably is, but let’s see if my photos will actually turn out good, not because of the film, but because of my technique and composition.
Happy shooting!
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