On a wonderful whim, my friend
Manuela and I decided to chase our Pho soup with some frugal shopping up at the goodwill in Ballard. to our surprise a treasure trove of AWESOME cameras awaited us. besides seeing your average polaroid and other automatic use 35mm cameras, we found cameras with measurable SPECS. Being able to know the SPECS on your gear is an important part of Photo Geekdom, so we picked the two best suitable cameras for our needs.
I've taken it upon myself to name this duo Thelma and Lil' Weezy.
Thelma - Ricoh AF-5
Lil' Weezy - Canon AF35-ML
these cameras were picked up for dirt cheap and are still in great working condition, they were of course equivalent to the point & shoots so prevalent in today's market. but one important fact is it still uses film. Tangible media today is a lost art form and reminds us to slow down in the age of speeding information. I might be an old romantic in this respect but tangible evidence of your efforts whether the results are good or bad still fills my heart with pride knowing I did it.
If not just for fun, picking up a goodwill camera and shooting a couple rolls of film can be an educational experiment reminding you to enjoy the happy mistakes and and plant a firm footing in the real world of image taking where every exposed frame of film counts and so should even those digital shots you can always retake.
TEST SHOTS: FUJIFILM 200ISO film speed.
indoor with no flash, the lack of light made the autofocus confused so some shots will turn out blurry if you're using film speed thats to slow or moving subjects.
Indoor with flash, since the camera knows the flash is being used it sets up automatically the best shooting distance with flash so everythings sharp, your camera should have something in a manual if you're lucky or on the camera body indicating the flash range.
Window Lighting is a great source of light if you prefer natural lit photos over flash photos.
Always center your shot or the background will be in focus.
be careful of those dimly lit areas again, longer blurrier photos and also out of focus, i still think this was a happy accident though
natural backlight and flash works awesome together too!
bathtubs are always fun
Make friends and don't be affraid to take pictures of strangers...
In conclusion, using 200ISO speed film was a bad choice indoors seeing as the automatic camera wanted to take longer blurrier exposures and the brackets in the middle of the view finder indicate where the focus will lie, so always center your shots with the focus! but half the fun is learning from your decisions coming out on top with a positive attitude. All together i spent $10 on the cameras ($3 for Thelma & $7 for lil weezy), $6 on expired film to test it with, and $10 dollars on development. i scanned my own film to keep down the cost and asked to keep the film uncut to make the process easier. for $26 i'm taking better photos than with my camera phone and opening possibilities to the limitless potential of film.
For your own analog budgeted adventure purchase a goodwill camera you feel comfortable using and some film from your drug store. treat your first roll as a test shot and a learning lesson. find a place that still developes film ask for only a proof and development. scan what you like and have fun!
see all the test shots on my
flickr.
- - J. Rivera
