Shooting Film

I’ve been slowly whittling down my film camera collection, keeping almost only units which have personal family history to them now. Whilst my fridge stocks of film are not exhausted, they are starting to run slim and at last count, my 120 film outnumbers my almost exhausted 35mm.

Today’s shots were from the last run I had with my Minolta X-570 before I sold it on. It does not have any family ties nor early learning days links. A fabulous manual camera to use. Minolta remains one of my favourite brands of the 60’s -90’s. If they had not been brought out by Sony, I likely would have remained with them into the digital era (assuming they kept up development).

One limiter to film nowadays is simply cost. Whilst I tend to home develop and buy lower end B&W film, it still all adds up. The ‘film feel’or look is real, but then, we digitise it anyway to share nowadays. Removing the pure film finish in a re-digitised master. I used to print my shots too (as in from an enlarger to photo paper in a darkroom) – another great hobby to get into if you have time and space!

On the flip side, film is less convenient, environmentally worse (*though producers like Kodak have some great sustainability and environmental practice in development) and arguably, surpassed in quality potential by modern equipment (35mm – larger 4×5 or 8X10 is a different topic). Once you are all set up on digital, you can operate near cost free. Film, bar perhaps high enders like Leica and Hasselblad, is pretty cheap to enter into, but expensive to shoot and develop. Fire off (and pay to have developed and scanned) 20 rolls of a half decent film stock now days and you are on your way to buying a nice’ish digital base. Dwell in the older used digital era like I now do and the options comparatively could be vast.

But regardless of my rambles, film is not dead. The movie industry has helped keep it alive way more than the revival of the still camera movement. Many films. At 24 frames per second, allowing for re-takes, edits, different cameras for different angles – it puts the conservative modern still film shooter as a blip on the map. So thank you to the film industry for keeping things classic! It will be a sad day when Kodak (in my opinion the only main one left) moves on.

There is something special about slowing down, taking the shot and waiting to see the result. Entirely possible to replicate this in the modern digital age – but most of us lack the patience and willpower to do so… also – if you have taken a bad shot or someone blinked, you can just take another few hundred and chose the best now – that just was not a practical possibility in the film era!

With that, I farewell the Minolta X-570

Away unplugged for 5 nights from tomorrow, so for those who do get email prompts and have been overwhelmed in the last 7 days of activity, I plan to cut back on my return. Perhaps several times a week. Lets wait and see!