I have on my desk, dear readers, a new toy. It’s a Nikon fm2n, manufactured some time in the early eighties. Yes, that’s right, dear readers: it shoots film.
Why on earth have I bought myself a film camera? When I managed to grab it from eBay for the princely sum of one hundred of your finest British pounds, I knew exactly why I wanted it: I wanted the simplicity of a manual camera, something that forced me to think harder about the image that I was trying to produce. Now, with it sat on my desk without any film in it (I’m heading into town later to pick up some Ilford HP4), I find myself wondering if I’m not just distracting myself from learning more about my craft.
Not long after I’d bought it, a blog post on the Marketing Essentials blog made me think about whether it had been a good idea after all. It included the following quote from Cort Anderson:
They talk about the experience of shooting with the cameras and shooting film. If I want a film experience I can dig out a 128 mb card to shoot on and wait a week to look at the images. If I want the toy camera look I can slap on my Lens Baby or hit one of a gazillion different Filters/Actions in Photoshop. It feels like I am going against the trend by wanting to take what I do and get better at it. I want to best at what I shoot and print.
So, as I sit here navel-gazing whilst some tests run (I’m working today in order to take Wednesday off for a shoot) I find myself wondering I’m not just trying to follow in the footsteps of Bert Stephani, Pieter van Impe et. al.? Film’s definitely not dead, but wouldn’t I be better honing my craft as a photographer rather than picking up a film camera and all the associated expenses that go with it?
I don’t know the answer yet; I guess I need to shoot a roll of film first before I come anywhere near knowing. I’ve never shot film (on an SLR) before, and I’ve never used an entirely manual camera before either; I’d like to at least find out whether I like it or not.
I think it’s good to ask, "is this thing I’m spending time on the most effective use of my time", but I also think it’s important to be a bit free and try stuff just for the sake of it. Manual film-based photography is part of the history of photography, and to that end, I’d say it’s valuable to get experience with it. Understanding the past usually brings a newfound appreciation for the present. It’s one of the reasons I love old music… it may at times seem dated, but it’s interesting to try to listen to it with fresh ears, and try to understand what it felt like when it was "pushing the envelope".
It’s definitely an interesting process. Being limited (if only be expense) to a small number of exposures helps you to focus much more on preparing your shot. At least that’s what I found. I still have a 35mm SLR with a 50mm lens, but all my efforts are going into digital SLR at the moment, working on the advice to learn one piece of kit inside out!
Good idea. To be truthful, I now feel I know my digital DSLRs well enough to be confident when using them; yesterday I managed to guess exposure values for Julian’s D700 to within a third of a stop when he was setting up to take the Launchpad group shot. I guess I’d like to see how that holds up shooting with film.
Worst case scenario I can sell the camera on. It wasn’t massively expensive and it will hold its price very well as long as I don’t do anything stupid.