A few weeks ago I got a whim to try out film photography. I didn't want to waste mooney on some old camera for the sake of it so after a bit of research I settled on an EOS-1 which can be found for about €100 and would work with a lot of the lenses I have already. It was a great camera for its time, taking inflation into account it would cost about €2500 so a total bargain. Even though I've been shooting photos for about 20 years the way people speak about film photography had me worried I'd fuck it up and I was just hoping some of the photos would come out well. I got a few rolls of Kodak Gold 200 as that seemed to be a good beginner film and it went really well!

Some of the photos are a bit overexposed but I think the light meter might be a bit off given how old the camera is, something that I can easily compensate for. This did lead me down a rabbit hole of looking into scanning negatives at home which was an enlightening experience. I was surprised how much variance there was from the way you "scan" them to what you use to process them on a computer. To scan negatives in the most basic way all you need is a bright light source and a camera, they'll come out pretty poor but technically you'll have them. I used my SAD lamp and a macro lens and shot them freehand, not even close to an ideal way but still fun to see how they come out. Below is the same photo scanned & processed three different ways. The first is from the photolab and the next two were done at home without any proper equipment.

So film photography ended up not being that tricky. Once you remember the basics of Aperture & Shutter Speed and keep your light meter in check it's just like taking photos digitally. I really like how well the camera presents information to the user as well, it's really simple and intuitive. What I enjoyed most though was how it makes you slow down when taking photos, you have 36 shots and you have no idea how it looks after you shoot so it makes you take your time to compose the shot and check that your settings are what you want. I have another roll of Kodak Gold 200 ready to be developed and I'm shooting a roll of Fuji Film 200. I'll share more photos when they're processed. Here's a few more from the first roll.