My First Film Cameras

^ I’m not a product photographer.

Film photography though. The #believeinfilm crew. The #filmisnotdead posse.

Although I do 99% of my shooting with vintage lenses, I’d never really thought about trying film. I’m not sure why that was. There’s obviously a decent sized and very passionate community of people doing it.

That doesn’t mean I should have just followed the crowd because there was a crowd to follow, but it’s a sign that shooting film is a fun hobby to get into.

Taking up film photography would also mean joining a community who can in turn see what I’m up to on Instagram and maybe even find their way back to this place.

That sounds like a cynical reason to pick up an old camera and some film and get shooting but, well, as a blogger, why wouldn’t you try to get more eyes on your work?

I’m not saying that’s why I bought these cameras. If it was, I’d have picked some up a lot earlier.

So why now? What led me to picking up my first film cameras?

Finding old cameras in charity shops

Because I found them in a charity shop in Nottingham, they were pretty cheap, and I’d had a couple of pints over lunch so I went nuts.

There were four cameras in the shop but I managed to limit myself to two. These were a Canon Sure Shot AF-7 and an Olympus Supertrip.

I didn’t know if they worked or not but they were cheap enough to take a punt and not worry if they didn’t.

Especially when the money’s going to charity and you’ve had a drink.

Side note: I chose the Kodak ColorPlus because it was the only film they had in Tesco (turns out there aren’t many places to buy film in Mansfield, UK).

It was more expensive than the cameras themselves.

No matter. I watched a video on how to actually put film in a camera and loaded them up. They seemed to work so I put them away ready for when I got back to China.

A delayed flight then meant a missed connection and a bonus day in Chongqing, where a local market square made a lovely little place to test out the Canon (and have a fantastic hot pot after).

Shooting my first film cameras for the first time

Walking around the square in Chongqing with the Canon did feel different to walking around with the digital Sony NEX I usually shoot with.

I liked it.

I liked taking my time with the shots. I liked trying to wait for the frame to be as good as I thought it would get. I liked using a viewfinder, which the Sony doesn’t have. I liked not seeing how the images had turned out.

At the time, I didn’t like the feeling when I missed a shot by delaying because I wasn’t sure and didn’t want to waste an exposure, then realising it would have been a good shot but I was now too late and the moment had gone.

But now, a few weeks later, I can’t even remember the shots I thought I’d missed – I just have the ones I made, and I like a lot of them, so it’s all good.

If you’ve read this far you’d probably like to see how they turned out. Well you can in this post right here.

Go check them out and let me know what you think. 😀

written by
LEE WEBB
Hi, I'm Lee - creator of My Favourite Lens and the one whose work you're seeing whenever you read a post on here.
I shoot as much film as I can in as many different cameras as I can, and I enjoy playing with vintage lenses on digital cameras also.

Everything I do and what I learn along the way gets shared on here, to inform and inspire you to get out and shoot as much - and as well - as you can too.

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