I always had a thing for shooting on 35mm film, even though its impossibly inconvenient in modern society. First, you have to buy somewhat expensive bulky film cartridges that hold a measly 36 exposures (or less!), then load the film into your camera. Once you begin shooting, you have to wait until you finish the roll to be able to wind the film back into the cartridge. You then have to take the cartridge out, drive it off to get processed and printed. Only then can you see what you ended up with, which may be less than satisfactory.
Ice-Packed Fish
When you compare this with digital cameras of any price range and size, which use quarter sized memory cards that can hold hundreds or thousands of images each, allowing for instant review of images and enable to make quick adjustments if necessary.
Fly resting on a leaf in my backyard.
Digital cameras also accommodate ISO adjustments from image to image instead of being stuck with a set ISO (depending on your roll of film), allowing for lower noise when outdoors in sunny clear skies or higher when indoors.
A good friend working on Starcraft at school.
In spite of all these reasons not to shoot film, there is still something special about it. I use my father's Nikon FE, which he bought way back in the 1980's. Just about every single image from my childhood was taken with this Camera. The FE still works great with all the lenses (except the Nikon G lenses) we own, despite being over twenty years old and having had thousands of exposures made on it. Featuring a electronic metering system which enabled automatic shutter speed calculation depending on f/stop and the Nikon F-Mount system made this camera hot stuff back in the day. There is no auto focus, film advance or film rewinding; things that even the most basic crappy $100 camera at Best Buy has nowadays.
Who watches the watchmen?
The feeling I have when i shoot with the FE is totally different from my D90. When I grab the FE, and crank the film advance lever, I can feel the resistance of the cartridge yielding the film, the mechanism charging the shutter assembly, and the rewinding knob on the opposite end turning. When bring the viewfinder up to my eye, I'm greeted by a big bright viewfinder adorned with Nikon's Standard K focusing screen, with a split prism focus (find a line, make it straight in the center, and you have perfect focus). Pressing the shutter release trigger yields an assuring click-clack as the mirror flips up, the shutter blinds open, exposing the photosensitive chemicals to an imperceptible short shot of light. Then, the shutter closes, and the mirror flips back down, all within a fraction of a second. When preparing to take a picture, I am much more careful. I compose, focus, recompose, refocus, because there is a feeling of permanence. When I expose my negative, I know that it is forever etched and burnt into that piece of film, not temporarily stored onto a flash memory card, waiting to be copied and then subsequently destroyed. With my D90, I'm less cautious, as I know that if this one doesn't turn out well, I can just take another one or 10, and hope that one is what I want. Its a bit disconnected from what I am doing.
Unloading Produce
I feel more connected to what I am doing when shooting with film, as I have more direct control over the final product. I can choose the lens and the brand, the ISO sensitivity, and the type of film that goes behind the shutter. This is why I like film--control.
Drunk Bear
Included are some shots I made with a Nikon FE, Nikon 50mm F/1.8AF and Micro-Nikkor 105mm F/2.8 AF-D on Fuji 400.
You can view the entire set online here.
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