A FILM ADVENTURE
MARCH 2, 2021
The short and winding road from the lesser known Beatles song
This is a project that has been in the works for a few weeks. Following a short text exchange with my favourite photographer on Instagram (@conradgolovac, check him out), I pulled out my dad's old film cameras to spice things up a bit. I tried my hand at an old Mamiya 645, but I hated the sort of standard 50mm equivalent focal length that was on it. I need wide angles.
So, I transitioned to my dad's favourite, his trusty old Canon A-1. We had to manually spring the shutter with a screwdriver from below many times to reactivate the condensator, but got it working again. I put on a little 24mm prime, bought myself a roll of Kodak Portra 400 (that seems to be the film that the cool kids are using) and started shooting. No autofocus, fixed sensitivity, one prime lens, and only 36 photos - each of them costing about 75 cents with developing and scanning. It spiced things up alright.
My dad driving
It turned out to be a nice change of pace. Each image costing something really makes you think about which ones you actually take. I had my problems with the technical restrictions, but eventually I started to enjoy the process and stopped looking at the back of the camera for a replay to appear. It slowed me down, in a good way.
After about two weeks, my film was full and I sent it for developing and scanning to MeinFilmLab, which I came across in another blog. They did a nice job - as far as I can tell - and were really friendly. Today, I got the link to download my images. I excitedly went through them, and discovered they weren't my best, but also not half bad. I cropped and tilted my favourites a little, and here we are with a little selection. I think the one of my dad driving is my favourite; I don't quite know why.
All in all, I will happily go back to shooting digital. Film is prohibitively expensive and I do like images without grain, having autofocus and other such luxuries. Nevertheless, this was a lovely little project and it taught me to think more about which shots to take - even with my digital cameras.
Some scenes from around here