Analog Photography 101! Or: How to Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Grain

[windit]

The film has globs of stuff that react to light, and keep what they saw a secret in the dark until they get dunked in acid. You can control the size of the hole, how long the door is open, and how fast the globs can remember the light they saw. The box itself does not need to cost you a month’s rent.

That's the greatest explanation of all time.

Hello I have stumbled across this thread late but am very glad I did. Thank you @pepper so much for this write up! You make it all so accessible!

I have been using a Kodak point-and-shoot (that used to be my nana's) pretty consistently for the last 6 or so years. She's just so reliable, and I now have a pretty decent sense of where her fixed focal length is, what light she can handle, etc.

But outside of that, I do everything digital, and have been kind of intimidated by fully-manual film cameras. BUT, because my friends know me as 'a camera person', I keep inheriting film cameras that I don't know how to use o_o .

As wisely stated by @stellarfieldanomaly , kit redundancy is no good, so I try to pass them forward so that they can live on with someone else. But I've just inherited another pile of cameras and these ones are different, so I think it's finally time to TRY AND SHOOT A FULLY MANUAL ROLL.

In this pile - an 8mm film camera (!) and a vintage pin-hole camera that shoots on god-knows-what film size.

The camera I want to try out is called the Lord SE, and it came with a full manual and letter from the seller who was in Japan. The two-generations-back man who bought this camera clearly did it on a trip, and so along with the fully Japanese manual, they gave him an English translation which looks like it was typed out by hand and then stapled together. So you have to use the Japanese diagrams with the English translation to get through. It's just all so wholesome that he kept all the paperwork together and his son inherited it and then he passed it on to the next generation and then it got handed to me.

I think I'll try it out with a B+W roll next weekend, and try out portraits of friends on a tripod. Fingers crossed.

I will attach some of the paperwork for fun x

[pepper]

Hello I have stumbled across this thread late but am very glad I did. Thank you @pepper so much for this write up! You make it all so accessible!

I'm so glad! This is the reason I made this thread was so people can feel empowered to give this hobby a real try without feeling scared 

Your camera is beautiful!! It looks like it functions similar to my favorite camera, the Canonet QL17iii. Same lens focal length too! I love the 40mm lens, I'm so excited for you    Also thank you for sharing images of the manual that's so cool. There's this old retired professor that keeps an archive of old camera manual scans, I think he'd appreciate having scans of this one because that seems super unique    If you're down for it maybe shoot him an email!

i really need to get around to making that darkroom printing writeup >.>

[rnottelovesowls]

question for pepper (and anyone else, if you'd like to chime in): have you ever bought or used...

• one of those silly plastic toy cameras that come in fun shapes like soda cans, juice boxes, or a cartoon character's body?
• camera film that was expired?

and why do people sell expired camera film, anyway? it's not like you can do anything with it

[stellarfieldanomaly]

@windit Got another one lads(and ladies and me). That camera looks cool! Watch out tho, Selenium meters function on a non-reversibly degrading selenium coating, on a camera that old it's not impossible that it's degraded to the point of non-functionality or to a point where the meter readings aren't accurate!

@rnottelovesowls Welcome! Toy cameras can be fun! They're usually really limited in terms of exposure settings, so shooting them with a built in flash or outside in direct sunlight is usually best.

As for expired film, there's a number of reasons people do it, many of which I don't particularly care for:

-It's cheap
-It's trendy for some reason
-You can get weird color shifts and chemical behaviors in development
-if it's a film that's out of production sometimes it's the only way to get it (Natura 1600, Aerochrome etc)
-If it's been kept frozen since it was new it might not be degraded at all (rare to find at this point)

If none of that specifically appeals to you I'd recommend just buying new film.

[Horsey Chobunso]

I am also not super fond of shooting expired film, but its definitely worth trying if you're okay with having unpredictable results. If you can find it under 5 years expired itll work mostly as intended if you meter normally. I've also had better success with expired black and white film, but that was a long time ago.

I'd only recommend shooting expired film on cameras with exposure composition or full manual controls because you'll want to purposely overexpose it. The general rule is 1 stop of overexposure for every 10 years expired. The chemicals on the film don't fully fail, they just get worse at capturing light