Closer to a year ago than I’d like to admit, I bought a Canon AE-1 Program and a number of rolls of film. I’ve finally gotten the film developed and had the joy of going through a roll of color (Fuji X-tra 400) and black and white (Ilford HP5 Plus) photos from the past 9 months or so. Most of the color pictures were from a trip to Shenandoah National Park and Graves Mountain while the black and white photos were closer to home around Henrico, RVA, and our house.
There was certainly a bit of a learning curve with the camera – but perhaps not surprisingly, using the AE-1 resulted in changing how I take pictures on my digital cameras. In most cases, I shoot with auto-ISO and manual aperture and shutter speed in order to get the right exposures. On the AE-1 (like all film cameras) your ISO is locked at whatever film you loaded into the camera. You can use automatic settings for aperture or aperture and shutter speed but the vast majority of the time, I was going full manual. Now when I pick up my digital cameras, I find myself often setting the ISO manually rather than always relying on auto ISO (though, I still definitely use auto a lot). The other big change for me was always needing to focus manually. I use manual focus on my digital cameras a fair bit (though it has increased after shooting film) but with digital cameras, you generally have some sophisticated focus assist tools. Not so with the AE-1. You have a microprism focusing screen and that’s it. I currently only have 50mm and 28mm lenses for the camera with f/2.8 maximum apertures so I was never working with razor thin depths of field but I still tended to shy away from shooting wide open unless I had clean lines to work with in the focusing screen.
The biggest difference in terms of my mindset for shooting film was the concrete realization that each shot had a cost. Of course, each shot with a digital camera also has a cost. But the cost of a digital image is time (and many more long-term costs such as wear and tear, storage, editing software, etc.) whereas it’s pretty straightforward to come up with a monetary cost per shot with film. And if you screw up a picture and know for sure that it’s not going to be good? Oh well – it’s still going to get developed and you can’t just delete that image from the film strip. I did eventually get to the point where I found that to be a bit freeing – everyone makes mistakes and film really doesn’t allow you to hide from them.
The lack of the ability to instantly review your exposure is also something that I eventually found mostly freeing. It almost gave me permission to be more in the moment. Plus, the anticipation and excitement of getting the prints and scans back from the developed film is also something that I thoroughly enjoyed! One of my favorite shots is a selfie of Victoria and I and when taking it, I honestly didn’t have very high hopes for it (see: manual focusing and exposure above) but it was an extremely pleasant surprise!
So overall, I’ve had a great experience with trying out film photography. It’s absolutely something I’ll continue to do for documenting my own life and experiences but it’s also something that I would do as an add-on to any of my services! I can’t wait to try out more filmstocks, techniques, and more!