Film Photography: What I Learned on my First Rolls of Film
By: Paulo Makalinao
Tags: Cameras, Art, Photography, Vintage, Creativity

It’s a Whole Lot More Manual

Shooting manual on your digital camera is already a lot for people getting into photography. Shooting “manual” on a film camera means an entirely different thing beyond your settings.

I first realized that manual focusing is not anything close to what it’s like on digital cameras. On digital cameras, I have the pleasure of focusing peaking, so I know exactly what’s tack sharp in the frame. On my AE-1, I have to make sure that these two little half circles in the viewfinder are lining up. And these viewfinders aren’t exactly the crispest either, so sometimes this is a difficult task.

I’m also learning about finding the right exposure. My light meter on my camera is all over the place. Comparing it to another light meter, my camera can be off by one to two stops. On the one hand, I could always have an external light meter, but that’s way too tedious. So I’ve had to learn Sunny 16 in order to judge the exposure for myself. It certainly takes a lot of self-trust to gauge my exposure without any tools, and sometimes I just have to go with my gut feeling about what I think the correct settings would be.

And then there’s the whole part about loading and unloading your film. After a few rolls, this is relatively easy, but it’s hard to get a feel for loading your film the first time. I was very afraid I was going to accidentally expose some of my frames.

But the worst part for me on my first few rolls was unloading. On my second roll ever, I forgot to press a little black button on the bottom of my camera that releases the spool holding the film. I ended up pulling back my rewind lever so hard that I snapped the film inside my camera, and I completely lost an entire roll, my second roll at that! There are just a lot more moving parts in a film camera that I had to understand. It’s really a learning process. Sometimes film is unforgiving, but I have to keep moving forward and learning from my mistakes.

It’s One and Done

On digital, I was very used to taking photos maybe two or three times in order to make sure I got it right. Maybe I missed focus, or maybe my exposure was off just a tad. I don’t have that luxury on film. I guess maybe I do, but it’s not exactly a luxury I can afford.

I typically have 36 exposures on a single roll. The fact of the matter is that I cannot spend 3 of those trying to take the same exact photo. So it’s one and done when I shoot on film. I really, really have to like a possible composition in order to risk two exposures on it.

And so unless you have tons and tons of money to spend shooting on film or shooting on film provides you forms of income, it’s all about, again, just trusting yourself to have gotten the image correct. It’s also just super easy to go through a roll of 36 very quickly. I saw that I was taking a lot more photos on a roll than I intended to per day and finishing rolls quicker than I thought. 36 is just not a very big number, especially coming from digital.

So every shot I take on film has to count. I am not throwing away my shot.

I Need to Wait for It

One of my biggest problems with digital was chimping. I wanted to know what my image looked like the exact second after I took it. I am a very impatient person on occasion. But film is a waiting game, and it took me like four or five days to see how my first couple of rolls turned out. And going forward, it might even take me a week or two to see how a roll turned out just because I will not process them right away.

But the anticipation of waiting for how your film came out is literally one of the most exciting and painful experiences all at the same time. There was absolutely nothing better than getting the scans back from my first couple of rolls when I returned to the photo store. And there was no greater relief than knowing I hadn’t messed up every single exposure I took.

I suppose this is all part of the joy in the film process, waiting days and days to figure out how a roll turned out and only being able to view your image long after you initially took it. It’s certainly difficult not to be able to see results instantly, but the end of the process is one of the most rewarding moments I’ve ever gone through.