In an era where the number one camera is the iPhone, everyone is a photographer at a moment's notice. Now, everyone's a travel blogger with Instagram-worthy pictures to make you question all of your life decisions. While I may make jokes, the accessibility and availability of cameras is a sign of how far we've come in a short period of time. A little over a century ago, cameras were clunky and cumbersome, required a ton of light, and used large formats either dangerous or difficult to work with (i.e. wet plate). Now everyone has a camera in their pocket capable of making night shots look clear as day. As digital technology progresses exponentially, I find myself increasingly using camera formats, which have long fallen out of fashion.
I consistently use my Nikon DSLR (disclaimer: I am not sponsored by Nikon, but if Nikon decided to change that I would have no objections) and the images it puts out are nothing short of fantstic. The detail and latitude in the digital RAW format is mind boggling to someone like me who grew up with disposable cameras and 1-hour photo labs. But I've found I shoot more when I use my DSLR not because there's more to shoot but because, well, I can. With a single SD card I can shoot 1200 RAW images, delete them all, shoot 1200 more and it wouldn't cost me anything (except the one time cost of the SD card). The expendability of photos in the digital realm creates bad shooting habits. I find the more frequently I use my DSLR, the lazier I get; I don't think as much about my shots. If something doesn't come out the way I want, I can instantly delete the image and try again.
Around two years ago I began shooting film again. I present to you my century-old 1912 Ansco Folding Buster Brown No. 2A, which for inexplicable reasons still works. I found this camera in a flea market and buying it is one of the smartest decisions I've ever made. At the time, I'd grown accustomed to the nearly limitless options of my DSLR, but this little guy is incredibly limiting. So limiting, in fact, I had to change the way I thought about photography.
1912 Ansco Folding Buster Brown No. 2A
Take a look at the specs:
Fixed focus lense with a 10 ft min. focus distance (took me a while to figure that out)
Five shutter speeds: Timer, Bulb, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100
Four aperture stops: f8, f16, f32, f64
For those of you who aren't a fellow camera dork, allow me to explain what the hell these numbers mean and why they're limiting.
A fixed focus lens means you can't change the focus on the camera. It is set to focus from a certain point - in this case 10 ft - to infinity. Think of it as the opposite of the lens on your smartphone.
The shutter speed (measured in fractions of a second) is the speed at which the shutter opens and exposes the frame to the incoming light. Basically, the film is exposed for less time with a smaller fraction (1/1000) and more time with a bigger fraction (1/50). Expose for less time, the darker the image. Expose for more time, the brighter the image. The Folding Buster Brown has 5 options for shutter speeds. My DSLR has shutter speeds from 30 seconds to 1/4000 of a second.
The aperture is what lets in light and is measured in f-stops. As you open the aperture and let let in more light, the lower your f-stop. As you close down the aperture and let in less light, the higher your f-stop. Most lenses now have around 9 stops (f1.8, f2, f2.8, f4, f5.6, f8, f11, f16, f22). The Folding Buster Brown has 4 stops and they're all really high, which means it doesn't let in a lot of light. Up until buying this camera, I had no idea you could close down past a f32. Working in the digital realm where everyone wants to imitate the cinematic film look - that soft, shallow depth of field - I'd mostly tried to keep my apertures low, low, low.
It had been been years since I'd shot a roll of film and even then I didn't know a thing about medium format film. I pieced together my own road map along the way through mistakes, mistakes, some YouTube tutorials, some mistakes, a few forums and, oh right, more mistakes. In the beginning, I was burning through rolls of film like they were SD cards. Most of my photos were terrible (see below):
Exposure issues -
I forgot about the shutter speed and/or aperture.
Out of focus -
I rushed.
Poorly composed - I cared more about getting the shot than making sure I had it.
With film you have to consider the cost of purchasing a roll, the processing, and the scans/prints (whichever you so choose). It's obvious why film fell out of fashion and why digital has taken over photography. Before you know it, you can spend $50 on a single roll of film. When my father taught me to use a camera as a kid, the lesson he stressed more than anything was make the shot count. Watching your money light on fire is a great way to be reminded of the most important part of not just shooting film, but photography as a whole: patience.
Patience. Patience. Patience. Patience not just in how I make a photograph, but how I think, work and interact with the world. The 21st century world we live in works at breakneck speed. Shooting film is a change of pace I welcome with open arms. After I finish a roll, I can't see it right away. I have to drop it off at the lab, pick it up, see the scans (or scan it myself, depending on how lazy/not lazy I'm feeling) and then post them to the interwebs. The instant gratification, which apps like Instagram and Snapchat have conditioned us to expect, isn't there. That probably sounds like a typical old man speech. It's okay to slow down for a while and escape the blackhole that is social media; work with something organic instead of the lifeless digital world.
But it's not just the slower pace that makes film appealing. The learning curve with film is fairly drastic. A lot of stocks look stunning and have fantastic latitude, but make a mistake and it can be rather unforgiving. Once it's developed, it's there for as long as you can bare to hold onto the negative. Shooting film forces me to be better; to be on my toes and not lean on the safety net of digital RAW. I plan my shots better, I double check my settings three times before I squeeze the shutter. Instead of broad strokes, I go in with a fine detail brush.
The only photography class I've ever taken was Digital Still Imaging my freshman year of college with a professor who was a dead ringer for Mr. Tumnus. The two years I've been consistently shooting film have been my self-taught education in photography. I've broadened my horizons from 120mm to 127 film and, finally, back to 35mm. As I acrue more cameras (and annoy my girlfriend with spending more money on cameras), I find myself constantly discovering something new. While film stock preference is certainly opinion-based, I've found which ones work better than others and also which stocks to use in specific scenarios. Slowly but surely, I've been refining my eye and photographic abilitiy. I've gone from point-and-shoot to more precise shooting, with both film and digital. My work will most likely never find its way into the likes of National Geographic, but I'm proud of how far I've come in a short period of time.
I'm not going to sit here and preach to you that film is the future because it's not. As the quality and cost of digital technology becomes more appealing than it already is, the high cost of using film will drive away even the enthusiasts. Film is not dead, that is true enough, but it's imminent death is on the horizon. I will shoot film until my bank account yells at me to stop (which may be sooner rather than later) and glean all I can from every mistake I make. If you have any interest in photography - as a hobby or a career - I strongly recommend you do the same before film is swept away for good by the digital wave.