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About a week ago I decided to ditch digital and start shooting film for no reason. After eighteen months of travelling, one stolen camera and an insurance pay-out back in 2004 I bought a Canon 500N film camera complete with two kit lens from Jessops in lovely old Wigan. Still riding on a wave of joy from travelling the golden triangle and photographing some of the most spectacular sights, I was dumped back into northwest england with a camera and little inspiration.
Upon my return I set myself a goal of coming to Japan and worked and saved for a year to get here, all the time my camera got little use, and was constantly stuck in program mode. When I arrived here the joy of photography came back but at a price, the price of film and its development, within three weeks of being hear I put down 20,000 yen on the smallest point and shoot I could buy, a pentax optio S4, and confined the old canon to the bottom of a drawer. That was until last week, when getting my gear together to go to Ginza to shoot, I came across it again, discarded and alone, lifeless and film less.
I made a decision there and then to get a film, a battery and shoot a roll of film, why bother you may ask, I have a nice Nikon digital four lenses all sorts of bits and pieces to go with it, why the hassle of using this piece of junk. Well, the reason is to test myself, for the last two years I have shot using digital nikon cameras and a few years of the point and shoot, and I wanted to see whether I could apply any of the things I had learnt about photography to film and what would be the differences, would I waste a roll of film, money for batteries to get a bunch of over or under exposed images, would the camera be full of dust, would the lenses be crap compared to my nikkors.
Well what have I learnt so far.
1) film is expensive - a roll of film cost me 700 Yen, granted it was a good roll and it was bloody hard to find a good roll in saitama but this expense helped me achieve one thing. I thought more about the shots I was about to take, sometimes with the Nikon I might blast of six, seven or eight shots of the same thing without taking the time or the care to see if I had a good image. With film I spent more time composing, thinking about light, exposure and aperture than before, each time I went to the push the button, I thought is this a good image, is this worth the price of the film? This is turn led to me looking at the environment around me, studying people in the train looking for good angles, lighting etc. In the last eight months of a one hour commute I would average a book a week, this week I didn't read a single page, I just opened my eyes to the world around me, and average 1-2 shots per day.
2) lenses are important - I mainly shot with a 28-80mm kit lens this week, it was shit, only stopped down to 3.5, was crappy in the low light of the train. I was so much into shooting film by the end of the first week, I bought second hand 50mm lens.
3) anticipation is a big thing - how many times did I look at the back of the film camera to see the image and then go "arrrr", how many times did I push the button only to realize I hadn`t checked the exposure properly - these simple mistakes may have resulted in me missing a moment, again I could shoot the same image, better and much more using digital, sometimes you
only get one moment and not knowing how it turned out is excruciating, worse still the store in Shiki told me it will take a week to get a black and white film developed. I think this is an important point, for me digital has taken the edge of the surprise element of my photos, instant gratification, after I was told it would take only an hour for a colour film, I shot a complete roll in Yoyogi just to see if I the camera was working, waiting for that one hour, I convinced myself that every image would be over-exposed because I used a high ISO film and so when I got to the counter and they showed me the contact print I almost leaped in the air because they were OK, some where a little overexposed but not as much as I had feared, here is a You Tube compilation of every shot I made that day, hopefully the black and whites will be as good, but again I have no idea.
(I want to edit this to try and add music, a format I will be using for more of my photos)
4) Weight - this camera is light, it fits neatly into my work bag and it is light....really light...I was using my Nikon on Sunday and the difference was amazing, the Canon feels like a toy, but that makes it less conspicuous and it is quiet too, the film winds out the beginning and so doesn't attract to much attention on the train.
5) Writing stuff down - a massive pain in the ass, every shot I have written the f-stop, shutter speed, exposure compensation, what mode, focal length and feelings about each shot. This has had its pros and cons, if I want to shoot three shots in a row I have to remember each setting, but it means I am learning what situations require certain settings, does that make sense, for example, if I am constantly shooting in the train at 7am each morning I am using similar settings and so I am trying to assess the situation before even looking at the camera. When I get the black and white shots back I will post them with the notes and my views on each one, unless they all turn out to be under-exposed.
Finally I have considered for a long time doing a 365 project, this is a massive undertaking which I don't think that I will be able to do, however in the last week I have managed a photo a day because of doing something different, therefore I am attempting a project until Xmas entitled "a daily commute" which should feature one image a day from my journey, already I feel a much better person about my difficult crowded stuffy commute, going to work has actually been fun, going that is, whether I can continue or have enough subject matter may be another thing.
