"Buy all the film you can get your hands on..."

I got a bit of a confession to make. I was getting bored of taking pictures.

Although I'm an avid amateur photographer, I have found myself getting into a bit of a rut regarding the hobby. This was probably not helped by changes at work and it picking up in what should be a fairly quiet period, as well as a lack of major holidays and conventions for me to go to for this half of the year.

The problem I was getting is that I have been in the photography game for a while. At least 13 years if you only count the years I've been in the hobby seriously and continuously, possibly more than 15 if you count the years I've been taking pictures on and off. After this amount of time, things get stale. Familiarity breeds contempt and it is too easy to get fatigued, not just in photography but any hobby.

I had some money still left over from my trip to Southampton, despite the amount spent to travel and stay there. That in itself is a dangerous thing. Boredom and money are an even more lethal combination. After doing some brief research (Read: Typed words into a search engine and skimmed through the results), I ended up deciding that I needed to go retro.

Really retro.

A long time ago, I convinced myself that I could never be able to shoot photographs using film. Never. I was too addicted with using digital and the convenience of just being able to quickly review and upload as well as touch up photos that are a bit over or underexposed.

However, I think it was this pursuit of "technical perfection" in my photography that was making me lose sight of what the intended spirit of the hobby is. Being artistic. Bring creative. Not just flawlessly recreating the scene in front of you. I was still being creative still even with those "confines", but I was getting a bit tired and fed up and was probably looking for some unpredictability. With that in mind, I decided to return to the very roots, the very basics of photography and started investing in old film cameras and several rolls of 35mm photographic film.

I'll admit there was another reason for buying said old film cameras. When I last had a picture of my Cosplay outfit taken at Hibanacon, it was suggested by my friends that I should pose with my own DSLR. I liked the look and sentiment but it always bugged me that my "character", a high school student, may not necessarily be able to afford a fancy digital camera. So I started looking for older bits of equipment that would be more like what a student might get. At first I got a Minolta 7000, a mostly plastic but still very nice film SLR from the 80s. Good start but it didn't quite look the part to me. I was looking for something with a silver/chrome colour. After some more searching around, I was tempted by a charity listing on a well known auction site for a Pentax K1000. This was a chrome 70s vintage mechanical SLR. It only took one small button battery and it was used for a light meter in the viewfinder only. This was exactly what I was imagining what an old film camera would look like, so I bought it and invested in some extra lens for it. It was a nice prop to go with my costume and made my old student now look like he from the past.

I didn't just take the camera on it's own to use it as a prop, however. I intended on experimenting with film at a major convention and wanted to use the K1000 in anger. And not just with any old film. I wanted to really go back to the past and brought two rolls of Ilford HP5 plus. This is basically a slightly modernised version of a brand of black and white film that has had it's origins in 1879. Some of my photography friends were pleasantly surprising when I mentioned my use of Ilford. There was something nice and tactile about using an old mechanical SLR. The dials and switchs have a nice clicky action to them and the camera proved to be mostly reliable despite it's age, with the only serious problem being a misadvanced frame that only resulted in the loss of one picture.

I think the results speak for themselves. I did some testing with practice rolls of film before going to Minamicon, but I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get used to using a photographic medium that was exactly the opposite of what I'm normally used to. There as no way to review the picture after it was taken and I wasn't sure if I could work with just a little meter telling me if the shot would be properly exposed.

I needn't have worried.

It turns out that my experience with digital cameras could be transferred directly to film cameras. When I got my developed pictures back, the results were astounding. They aren't all perfect, but that was very much the point and they all had the look I was aiming for. Grainy, monochrome, just enough fuzz to give it a very old school feel. Even with the pictures digitally scanned onto a CD, you can tell they looked different to just taking a picture digitally in black and white. I could simulate the look by turning up the image sensor sensitivity on a digital camera to create some imaging noise or just use some clever post-processing software, but that is all it would've been. A simulation. I wanted to create that old fashioned photography look for real. It would be more genuine and ultimately fit more in what I have in mind when I think of film photography.

Why take my word for it? Have a look for yourself at this set from Minamicon 2019 and decide for yourself.

My experiments with film photography reignited my passion for the hobby. It is amazing how small actions can get you interested in something again. By making use of a form of picture taking that is more limited, you find it forces you to get really creative. Digital cameras, you can just shoot a whole bunch of frames, then you spend several hours looking through them, picking and choosing the perfect ones you are happy with. You have the opportunity to take them again if they really didn't turn out the way you want them or even just edit them on a computer or phone. You do not have that with film. You realistically only have one attempt to make that perfect shot. Maybe two (Unless you spent large stacks of money on spare film). You find yourself being more careful, more considered with your exposures. You are forced to do more thinking about the cameras settings and how you frame the picture. You take more time in actually taking the picture. In some ways this might seem like a downside, but if you are being creative, it is actually a good thing. If you want to just capture the moment, there are plenty of digital cameras to allow you to do that. For those of us who want to try something different, more creative and spontaneous, yet slower paced, I encourage you to give film a try. Or return to it if you have used it before and move to digital.

You may surprise yourself with the results.

Be adventurous. Turn the clock back and try taking pictures the analogue way.

I certainly don't regret it.

As the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt (Who supplied my profile quote) once said:
"My personal advice is: Spend the money you would put into such an instrument for film. Buy yards of film, miles of it. Buy all the film you can get your hands on. And then experiment with it.That is the only way to be successful in photography. Test, try, experiment, feel your way along. It is the experience, not technique, which counts in camera work first of all. If you get the feel of photography, you can take fifteen pictures while one of your opponents is trying out his exposure meter."