Film

Film isn't dead, it just smells funny. A cute twist on a Frank Zappa quote.

Pearl at the dry lake bed

Pearl loves film, and several times while we were out shooting the topic of film photography has come up and we've talked about shooting large and medium format. Growing up I used many different cameras and films, my dad was a photo bug and so we had medium format cameras and Polaroid cameras, I remember buying several inexpensive cameras when I was in school, eventually getting a 35mm once I got older. When a friend and fellow photographer posted several images he had just done on film, well that was the last straw and I did some online shopping for film cameras and film.

Pearl in the high desert

The first purchase was a used Minolta 35mm Maxxum, amazing how if you look you can find great deals on used equipment that is in pristine condition, I then ordered a wide angle Holga pinhole camera. A few weeks later out on a shoot with Pearl I borrowed her Holga 120N, I loved the images so I got one too, it's the camera I used for the first three images in this blog.

Pearl desert morning

The only processing in the Holga images was to increase the contrast and add a color filter. 

Pearl on the mesa

I've thought about working with a medium format camera again so I started doing some research, because of the desert areas and conditions I work in I figured a view camera would be too difficult and frustrating, so I narrowed my search to cameras designed for the field. I found a used Pentax 67 online at B&H photo, it came with the 105mm lens and had the Pentax Prism light metering. I still need to find a prime lens for it but so far so good, the last 3 images in the blog were shot with this Pentax.

Pearl on the playa

In the past few photo shoots I've used half a dozen different cameras including my phone! (Thank goodness Pearl has patience with me reloading cameras and experimenting with settings). I am very pleased with these images, I'm getting much more comfortable back on manual settings and shooting film has caused me to see a bit differently, possibly even widened my field of view (however I still look at the back of the camera after the shot for the preview that is no longer there).

"If you use film you can't see it, so you need to feel it." ~Hervé Lewis