One Month of Shooting Film
This past month, shooting film has taken over as my number one hobby. I have a couple of unfinished drafts about my January reading goals and plans to review a couple of the books I read, but I keep dragging my feet on writing them because all I can think about is film photography: what I'm going to shoot next, when my next set of scans will be ready, and how much film I'm going to pack for my Europe trip. I recognize that this is likely the novelty effect of trying something new, but I'm all about going with the flow so I'm enjoying the feeling of being excited and obsessed for as long as I can maintain it.
Since my first post, I've shot a few more rolls of film, most on the point and shoot camera but one latest one on my SLR! I think I'm getting the hang of my point and shoot—it looks like it's only good for faraway shots, which is fine by me. Good to know that I won't be able to get good pet portraits out of it, but it still takes good pictures of everything else. The SLR, though, will take require some more time to figure out: there's an extensive manual that I've only skimmed, and there are lots of settings I haven't really had time to fiddle with. But my first roll on the SLR turned out pretty good, with relatively few out-of-focus shots!
I tried so hard to focus on the lifeguard tower for this shot, but I just couldn't get it to happen. It might have been too dark? That's another thing to figure out: how to take outdoor pictures in low lighting, especially for sunsets when I imagine I wouldn't want the flash on. I am glad, however, that I was able to figure out how to set the dates properly. I probably won't want the date tag on all my photos, but right now I'm really enjoying the retro touch.
I'm glad I got a clearer shot with the point and shoot—it was a really beautiful sunset, and it would have been a waste to miss it entirely. That said, I don't know what I'm doing wrong with my SLR! Why did the same scenery come out so blurry? And also: What is up with the vignette effect here? I didn't add a vignette on Lightroom, so this is definitely something camera-related.
These questions, while mildly frustrating, actually make me excited to shoot more film! They're like fun little puzzles for me to solve, after which I can (eventually, possibly, hopefully!) take better pictures with more consistency and reliability. And the end goal of all this, of course, is to take beautiful photos of my dogs so that I can memorialize them forever.
My takeaways and self-assigned homework from these latest scans are:
- Figure out how to manual focus on the SLR, because autofocus might not work in low light settings
- Compensate for how my photos seem to lean crooked to the left, so that I don't have to rely as much on Lightroom to level it out
- Diagnose the vignette issue that seems to mostly happen in the point and shoot but might also be present in the SLR too
And with that, I leave you with a few more shots I liked (and shoutout to Lightroom, seriously—it feels like cheating? But all the same, I've never not edited a photo, so maybe it isn't?):
