analog film

last frame magic

02 Aug 2024

In the past few weeks, I’ve been into analog photography on 35mm film.

Photography is something I always enjoyed - something probably passed down from Dad, whose digital camera I fondly remember shooting in Bulgaria. If I had that kind of windfall money, a DSLR camera was somewhere on my bucket list - something I can stick a proper zoom lens on.

Even on my smartphone, I always cared about the camera, and I would often mess with the pro version of it - taking pictures as well as I can, messing with exposure, white balance, to capture whatever I’m looking at precisely.

How it started

In September I’m heading to Japan for a 10 day trip.

Japan has always been a dream trip of mine, for reasons that are probably obvious if you scroll my timeline for just a bit. Now that I’m finally set to go, I wanted to create an unique record of my time in Japan.

At the same time, over the years, I’ve been talking to a friend of mine who’s into analog photography himself. I had a few shots taken of me on film, I even fucked around with putting Polaroid cartridges in my old 635CL.

It turned out my uncle had a Smena 8M laying around gathering dust - one that was still operational. So I borrowed it and shot a roll of Fomapan 400… and after that, I picked up a Pentax MX.

Why film?

It’s 2024. We all carry INCREDIBLY competent cameras on us every day, in our phones. If there’s one thing shooting film has reminded me of, it’s just how crazy sensitive modern smartphone cameras are - capable of taking shots with mere crumbs of light. Much unlike film, where past a certain hour you need a tripod to capture anything at all.

Film is also expensive. The rolls themselves, the development and scanning - for which you have to wait, to even find out if the photos turned out okay.

If the photo itself and the effect of it was my goal, I can accomplish that with my phone and Snapseed. So that’s not the whole story.

The gear itself & mechanical satisfaction

The first time I fired the shutter on my Pentax MX, the slap of the mirror was incredibly satisfying. Operating the focus, zoom and aperture rings has a tactile feel to it, along with every control on the camera. Now, this is also true of DSLRs…

Vintage gear prices

…but I don’t think I’d be able to buy a DSLR for the price of a Nintendo Switch. The operating cost of film photography may be high, but the entry level to some of the more pro-tier SLR camera gear is actually a little lower. The Pentax MX with its 40-80mm lens cost me about 700 PLN. Considerable, but affordable.

Physical record

At the end of a digital shot, I am left with a file. In my experiences, files are a bit more volatile than physical media. Tended to correctly, they can last pretty long - but a freak accident can still wipe them out more easily and irreversibly than physical media.

Negatives are physical media that contain a record of the photons my camera saw, frozen at a moment in time. This in itself is a little fascinating. I can reproduce the images even from old negatives and slides we found in the attic.

To be sure, these negatives are hardly more immortal than a file. They’ll end up in a cupboard only to be forgotten about. But it’s easier to forget about a negative than about a backup…

No opinions

Every now and then, shooting on my phone is a struggle. The camera app has opinions. Its autofocus might be unable to lock in on the tiny detail you care about. It might change the curve it’s using to balance your image right before you press the shutter, suddenly making the image wash out.

With film, you get more options to shoot fully manually. If you don’t want to, there are also plenty of point and shoots - controlling optics using electronics is something we’ve gotten crazy good at even before the digital sensor. There’s a camera for every level of engagement with the process you care about.

The process & being present

Having a whole separate camera and a development step means two things.

When I shoot, I have to lock in. I don’t want to waste too much film, after all. Thanks to this, I feel like I come out taking photos I like more.

And when I finally get the mail from the lab with my scans, it’s like a gacha pull, or like a tiny Christmas. It’s a whole event - review the photos, send them around to friends, post them online.

The photos are still really good

Physically capturing photons, even on small format film, can still produce a really crisp, sharp digital image. Slides and negatives store information pretty well, and reproducing & enlarging the images with light is something we’re already very good at.

If anything, I like seeing film grain much better than some of the crazy post-processed AI stitching I see in smartphone photos…

Experiences thus far

The Pentax is amazing. I love shooting it, the sound of the shutter. I’ve been turning out some fun images on it, including when I took it to the outskirts of Animatsuri and took some cosplayer photos.

The Smena… is unforgiving. Having no feedback like you get with an SLR, I often ended up metering the scene wrong or forgetting to switch one of the settings (shutter speed, aperture, focus). At one point, I had to get it repaired, since I applied too much force when making a mistake (unwinding the film without holding down the shutter trigger). I’ve got a Kodak ColorPlus 200 wound on it now. But as seen above, it can still take a real photo. After so many years. I guess that’s another thing - old cameras are more repairable.

The 40-80mm zoom lens that came with my Pentax is partially dysfunctional - it won’t zoom out below about 55mm focal length, so it’s effectively a 55-80 lens. Not a big deal, I’ve been taking photos with it anyway, but I’m thinking of getting another lens at some point - most likely a prime lens.

I’m well aware of GAS, which is why I’m deliberating on these choices still. I’d like to give myself better odds for late evening/artificial light photography as well, so it’s a bit of a tossup between 50mm with a wider F1.7 or even F1.4 aperture, and 28mm with a tighter one… (Wider aperture -> more light)

I do also have a borrowed 28-80mm lens that I plan to shoot with, on Candido 400 film (a CineStill clone).

I love the photos I took - some of my best work, lots of stuff I couldn’t pull off on a smartphone. I’ve been posting them on my socials, and I can’t wait to shoot more.

–Wikt