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Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras
03-11-2019, 08:58 PM
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Here is a print I did tonight. Not the best shot but it's dark and 11 at night :P
Photo was taken with the Spotmatic SP and the Auto Tak 35mm f2.3 at anywhere between F8 and F11.
 Wet Print by Brian Mckee, on Flickr
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Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras
03-03-2019, 05:04 PM
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Yah I got to hold a Pentax 67 at my local camera store recently. It was shocking to me and I've been around quite a few cameras :lol:
It's something I'd love to save up for.
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Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras
03-03-2019, 10:40 AM
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Let me preface this and say that while I'm old enough to remember people using film, I grew up using digital. My first "real" camera was a Sony DSC-H20, a great point and shoot with decent manual controls for the time. Then years later I got myself the K-01 as my first IL camera and began my journey into "serious" photography.
Since then I've been trying to learn and experience new things with photography. So at the end of last year I saw a posting for a dark room class, where you develop your own film, do contact printing and other fun stuff I've had no experience with. So a few weeks ago I finally started the course and have been having a blast developing and printing in the dark room. It's amazing to me that while the methods are completely different, you can do very similar things in the dark room as you can in lightroom, albeit with more trial and error. But those differences really opened up my mind and allow me to think in a different way when shooting.
However the best part for me wasn't even the class, it came with just shooting film itself. I had owned a film camera for a while now, I bought a rather nice condition Yashica electro years back that I had shot a couple rolls through but the film was really expired and heavily magenta shifted so I don't think I really enjoyed it all too much. But this time around a couple forum goers here had gifted me their unused film cameras this Christmas (you know who you are! Thank you so much!). It was a Pentax ME and a black Spotmatic. These cameras really changed my perspective on everything when it came to shooting film.
My favorite part of the process is imagining the shot. See with digital I had a habit of having an "idea" for a shot, but I would mainly take shots and see how they turn out and adjust off the instant feedback to what would be good. With film however such "instant feedback" to get good framing and good exposure just aren't there. When I was shooting I had to plan it all in my head with the experience I had and the knowledge I've gotten from here and elsewhere. It was truly a wonderful experience to frame in the viewfinder and imagining how it would come out on the black and white film I was shooting on.
That brings me to my next point. Lack of chimping. There's just something that feels free about not having a screen on the back of your camera. When you plan and take your shot carefully you're not digging into the shot to see whether not it was "pin sharp"; you move on and find the next thing and truly enjoy what you're doing. It's almost organic how the photo making process and the activity you're doing seamlessly mesh together when you're not super worried about how you did.
And finally, for me one thing I wasn't expecting film to do for me was make it far easier to interact with people. I've never been one to talk to people and ask for their pictures when shooting digital, but something with film just gets "positive" attention. People love to ask questions about the cameras. "Wow is that film?!" "How old is it?" "I think my grandparents had one of those!" A film camera just seems to break the ice and put me into situations I had never been before; talking to random people. I didn't feel afraid to ask people "can I take your photo?" for the first time.
Film has been truly a great experience for me so far, and I think anyone who has only shot digital needs to experience it.
I hope I can edit this thread in a couple days with some examples, going to finish printing some of the negatives this upcoming monday.
PS. The ME makes me yearn for the ME super, what a wonderful little camera.
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