My First Film Roll

[elemental]

After getting my first roll of film developed today, I figured I'd share some of the results as part II of my epic journey to the dawn of photographic time (as in a film camera from maybe five years ago). Overall, I feel like I've learned a lot from this first roll. My Pentax encourages me to hack and slash my way through photography- point, shoot, adjust, repeat. While there are plenty of things to pick up shooting this way, for me it never forced me to zero in one what was "right." I just ballparked it and then dialed it in. With this camera, there is no "dialing in." It is forcing me to make decisions instead of exploring, and it won't let me "see how a picture will come out" before committing to it like my DSLR. A few pictures that I thought might work simply crashed and burned because of bad lighting, slow shutter speed, or any other number of factors. Instead of "click,click" and the right picture, I will now have to take this into account the next time I shoot. I intend to try some of these same shots again in my next roll. Now, without further ado, a few that I find interesting. Please excuse the low quality. These are scans from my prints. I'm going to have the negatives scanned, but Ritz will only do it onto a CD and there's a flat rate for a CD etc. etc.



1. Keys

I do a decent amount of macro work like this in digital, but I wanted to try it once in film without the safety net. My first try didn't work because of bad lighting (red cast from too much incandescent) and a slow shutter speed (something like 1/10), but this one came out better. Too bad, because it isn't composed as well.



2. Parade

Really just a snapshot, but I like it. It's definitely better than your average staff photo in my local newspaper (ick). The closer-up pictures I took while walking by on the same side of the street (with plenty of glares from teachers) were too slow and had some unfortunate motion blur.



3. Roof/Sky

I went off to finish off my roll last night, and after a few (bad) shots of an abandoned firetruck, I started pointing my camera at anything and everything to finish the last three frames. This was a building nearby. It's more like the kind of thing I usually do with digital.



4. Chairs

I stopped in a local camera shop in my wanderings yesterday, and struck up a conversation with the owner about the misery of wide angle on a crop body digital. He was trying to clear out some old gear, and insisted that I try am 0.25X wide-angle/fisheye adapter. This was the result. 28-90mm at the 28 end for a claimed effective focal length of 9mm. While I had a lot of fun with this little toy, I think I see why most consider them a joke. The only un-funny thing about it would have been spending $119 on it.



Overall, I am happy with this roll, and looking forward to the next one. To that end, I have bought and loaded a roll of Tri-X 400 black and white film, so I guess the adventures continue.

 

[christopher walrath]

So I guess this camera is going to make you 'see' in your mind what the image is going to look like.

And that is a good thing. Do your best to replace trial and error with knowledge and experience.

And have fun.

 

[Early]

Some of us might like to see the so called bad shots of the abandoned fire truck.:sillysmi:

 

[randerson07]

I kind of like #3, you can absolutely tell it was shot on film.

 

[terri]

Hi elemental - I've moved this thread to the General Gallery, as the discussion forums aren't really the place to post images.

btw, #3 is really a nice image. Keep shooting, you have a good eye.