Why I ‘upgraded’ to a film camera that’s older than I am

Fall Motreging Week looks at a strange moment to celebrate my move to a 50 -year -old film camera, but there is a logic: not because movies photos are timeless, or because I want to wave the heat and attraction of cereals and analogs, but because I don’t think there is a better way to teach you photography.

This is how I entered the cinema. At one point in the past decade, the revision of phones has been more or less transformed to examine the cameras with touch screens at the back. For a writer without photography experience, it started to become a problem, and I realized that I had to learn enough about the cameras to hold mine. I also had to take my own photos of products, so I needed to improve on the practical side of photography, not just theory.

I started by borrowing an old digital SLR from my office photography studio, using it for work photos and a little weekend practice. I tried to make myself think about the framing, to consider the modes of the camera, to learn to enjoy the light. It helped, but only up to a point. The problem with modern cameras, you see, is that anything can be automatic. And of course, I started doing things as manually as possible, but for obvious reasons, most of my photos have sucked. When I changed the camera into automatic mode, they have sucked much less. The simple fact of having the possibility of letting the camera do the work meant that I did Let the camera do the work and I don’t learn much accordingly.

Obviously, I needed a camera that could do less, no more. But the cameras are not cheap either – certainly not cheap enough for the salary of an entry -level journalist. Basic tech at a budget price? It had to be a film camera.

I turned to Ebay, and for the princely sum of £ 129.01 (around $ 166 at the time, if I was doing my mathematics correctly), I became the proud owner of an EF SLR barrel with an objective of 50 mm, f / 1.8 and an original strap which was almost ready to break (and finally, I was spending more than peak).

Made between 1973 and 1978, the barrel is comfortably older than me, but probably in better condition. He picked up a few bumps and scratches over the years – some before putting his hands on it, much after – but since it is built in metal and has the weight and head of a brick, I am convinced that it will survive me.

Most importantly, it’s basic. Real basic. It was high-end technology in the mid-1970s, which means that it has clever features like an electro-mechanical component which only uses the battery for exposure greater than a half-second, but is entirely mechanical below this. But the most automated he obtains is a priority of shutter, which means that you choose the shutter speed and that the camera automatically defines the opening. I used it a little, just to get to things with things. Choosing your shutter speed always means taking into account the light or darkness of your environment, or the speed of your subject, there is therefore no defined and compulsory approach that a modern camera allows.

It didn’t take me long to realize that fixing the shutter speed, I also thought of the opening. Opting for a rapid shutter speed made the camera more likely to use a wider opening to compensate, resulting in a more shallow depth; A slower shutter speed tended to leave the photo more to the point. And if I was already worried about the opening … Well, it made no sense to use this automatic mode. I went to the manual shooting and I did not look back, trusting the integrated light counter to give me an approximate guide to the opening, and my instinct to take it from there.

Since then, I slowly started to think more about the film itself, using different ISO as a function of light, or by trying (and above all failing) to capture large black and white plans.

I should be clear: I have taken a lot of bad movies in the past six years. And it sucks! Especially because during the film cameras are cheap, movie is not always. I might have spent more on film rolls and development than ever on a without modern mirror and one or two objectives, but that is also part of the point: the shooting of the film are important, so you never want to waste them.

Give me a digital camera (or a phone) and I take 10, 20, 30 plans of the same thing in the hope that one of them comes out well. I’m going to draw hundreds of photos of products for a Edge Review, or a dinner for my food newsletter, confident that I can make my way to win a game of figures. Of course, I think of the supervision, to take into account the origin of the light or what is the best angle. But every unique photo does not really matter, encouraging me to shoot a lot and to think little.

The cost of the film – and the downside that comes with a single roller of 24 or 36 photos that you will have to exchange at a given moment – completely modifies the equation. I buy the cheapest color film I can find and I still pay about £ 10 (about $ 13.50) per roll. Then I pay £ 6 additional (or $ 8) to develop it and scan in JPEGS. This means that I pay around 60 cents in total per photo, and it’s as cheap as I can get it – I should pay more for more sophisticated films, higher resolution analyzes or raw files, and to obtain physical prints. I don’t want to waste a single frame if I can help him, so each The photo is considered, calculated, obsessed. I cannot get away with the parameters or the confidence that I will repair the framing in the post, which means that the essential trio of the ISO, the opening and the shutter speed is never far from my mind.

On the other hand, while the film itself is an additional cost, the objectives are a plot cheaper. I now have a collection of four objectives, and the most expensive in the group was £ 33.95 (around $ 41 at the time) for a 28 mm wide angle from the American manufacturer Bell & Howell. I spent a few books less than that on a variable telephoto lens of 70-210 mm that I won with me on a safari on Kenya – the cheapest cannon equivalent to this telephoto would be the price 10 times, and you could pay 10 times if you wanted. This is how I also learned – for about $ 100 in total, I picked up a trio of new objectives that each taught me about the opening, the framing and the depth of field, things that I could never have learned with the same old 50 mm that I picked up the first day.

There are drawbacks. I have already said that the film could be expensive, and I almost left entirely the strongest of the cocovio pandemic when the world shortages have further increased prices. I have lost countless blows of light of light or unhappy managed accidental, many came out deformed or discolored, and at least two whole rollers were essentially wasted because they were exposed to light. I miss the immediacy too – when I finished turning a roll, it will be at least a week before recovering my photos, and generally longer. This can mean wonderful surprises when I discovered a blow that I had completely forgotten, but it can also alleviate the educational aspect – if I do not remember taking the photo, I do not remember that the parameters I get it, or how to do the same in the future.

I still want a digital camera. I read my Edge The colleagues’ cameras examine with envy, tempted by the siren song of modern treatment, immediate access and this easy automatic mode that I have refused so long. Sometimes I find myself googling used Fujifilms just to play with the idea. I am sure that I will buy a finally, but thanks to the film, I know that I will be all the better a photographer at that time. And anyway, my faithful old cannon EF is not going.

Photograph by Dominic Preston / The Verge