Why I love film photography
Film cameras were a big part of my life growing up. From holiday shots, to birthday parties and football matches, I fondly remember being around cameras as a child. In the modern age of instant gratification, it’s so easy to take an arty snap for Instagram or a quick video for TikTok. I am guilty of getting my smartphone out, snapping away, and then not looking at my camera roll again for weeks. Anything that surfaces for social media is guaranteed to be a highlight from my day, most likely adorned with a snazzy filter, with everything else discarded or overlooked. Earlier this year, my outlook on photography changed.
May 2024. I was scrolling through X (is it just me who still calls it Twitter though?), and a post came up on my timeline. A guy who had taken his film camera to Portugal for England’s Euro 2004 matches was looking back over the photos 20 years later. He was due to follow England to the tournament again in 2024, this time in Germany. I loved the nostalgia of his photos, the ‘retro’ branding, the lack of airbrushing, and imagining the little thrill he would have experienced when he got the photos back, having had little to no idea whether they would turn out well at the time he composed each shot. I was in the process of planning a trip to Euro 2024 myself (albeit following Scotland and not England), and was instantly inspired to start online shopping for a disposable camera. A strange concept really, to online shop for something like that. As a child, I remember going to somewhere like Tesco or, weirdly, chemists such as Boots or Superdrug to get my hands on some film for my camera. Inevitably, it came in one of those round pots, a few inches tall, probably black, with a little plastic lid, and I’d put something like coins in it once I’d loaded the film in my camera. These memories came back to me while I pondered whether or not I should take a silly little disposable camera with me to Germany. Of course, I got one. I really loved the feeling of not being able to instantly post a shot on Instagram. Not only that, I also loved not even being able to see what I had just taken. No idea whether or not I had my finger over the lens or if it was too dark for the camera to cope (I bought possibly the only disposable camera without a flash available on Earth). Soon after returning from the trip, I had the camera developed, scanned, and the photos printed. Waiting for the development had me reminiscing once more. We would put a film into Boots or Tesco for processing, do the shopping, and sometimes within a couple of hours the photos would be ready. Unwrapping the envelope, seeing the contact sheet on top, and reliving each and every shot. Where was that taken? Who are those people in the background? Remember how hot is was that day?
July 2024. Fresh from the successes of my film photography in Germany, I looked into getting a proper film camera. After sifting through the ‘film photography is too expensive, don’t do it’ articles, I settled on getting a half-frame film camera. Plenty of vintage ones available on the likes of eBay, but I decided on the Kodak Ektar H35, a fairly new camera released in the last couple of years. The benefit of half-frame is that it’s just that - each picture takes up half of a standard frame, resulting in getting double the amount of exposures per roll of film. One of the most economical ways to get into film photography! I suppose my review of this camera would be that it’s great for use in the broad daylight, but it doesn’t handle indoors well, and you can’t change any settings manually, other than whether or not you want to use the flash (yes, I made sure this camera actually had a flash). It’s super light and easy to take around, weighs basically the same as a disposable camera and it’s great to just chuck in my bag for trips out and about.
Later in July 2024. I love a bargain, so I continued to look for more ways to make my new film photography hobby a little easier on the wallet. Enter, expired film. Now, up until this point I had no idea film expired but apparently over time, the light sensitivity of film degrades, resulting in reduced quality of the film. People sell expired film for cheaper than it would have been new (usually..!), so I chanced it on an eBay lot of four rolls, each expiring at various points since 1995. I shot a roll in the Kodak Ektar H35 on a very sunny day, letting the sun overexpose the shots for me (bearing in mind I had no ability to manually change any settings on the camera myself). It was probably a bit of a mistake as most of the shots came out pretty dark, but it was an experiment nonetheless.
August 2024. I felt the itch of getting a manual film camera become more overwhelming. My half-frame camera absolutely serves its purpose, but as I was getting more into it, I felt my tools needed to follow suit. Imagine my joy when I managed to secure an old Pentax MG for £16 on eBay!! Hailing from the early 1980s, the MG is a semi-automatic film camera which can take batteries for the internal light meter and shutter. Don’t worry if you don’t know what that means, I didn’t really either. After a quick Google, it was simple - insert batteries, set the ISO (stated on the box of your film), decide which aperture to shoot at (i.e., how bright is the situation), and the camera will tell you via the viewfinder if it can find a shutter speed fast enough for you. Pretty high-tech for a camera which was over a decade older than I am, I thought. After unpacking it from the shoe box in which it was sent (got to love eBay), I put two fairly obscure round batteries in it and loaded the second roll of expired film I bought from eBay. Despite inserting the batteries, I noticed the light meter wasn’t working and the shutter was struggling a little bit. I was disappointed, but blamed myself for buying an untested camera from the internet, and took it out round the city anyway. The misleading thing is that everything looks sharp and well-lit through the viewfinder and, when you’re used to digital photography, it’s disappointing when the shots don’t come out as you saw them. I got the roll of film back, and the photo lab said most of it was blank. I was gutted. I spent about three hours on the internet that night searching for a solution. Finally, I found a PDF copy of the original camera manual online and the first page highlighted the issue. Reader, I had inserted the batteries the wrong way. The frustration was real. That roll of film would have turned out so well! There was one shot in particular of a man wearing a leopard print trilby on the high street that I was so looking forward to seeing. Alas, I’ll probably never see him again.
Later in August 2024. Once I had gotten over the frustration, disappointment, embarrassment triptych, it was time to see whether or not the MG actually worked. I decided to shoot a non-expired roll (i.e., one I just bought fresh), so off I went to Glasgow for a day trip. I could not have been happier with the results. I used a local lab in Queen’s Park (shoutout to Gulabi), who scanned my shots in high-res in an incredibly quick time. I walked there in the pouring rain from central Glasgow, but they do also accept rolls of film being posted to them. From now on, they are my go-to lab of choice for developing and scanning. Next month, I go to Las Vegas and I am so excited to take my film camera and capture snippets of my time there with my mum. Memories are precious and when you can immortalise that on film, there is nothing better. Reminiscing over my childhood experiences with film has brought it all back to me. I’m 30 now, and it’s still just as thrilling.
Anyway, Viva Las Vegas.
P.S. check out my film photography from Germany, Dundee, and Glasgow.
