The Nostalgia of Shooting Film

It's been a while since I last posted here.  I blame it on a piece of $*&+ desktop (I really really need to switch to a Mac this Christmas) and a very busy family life.  I'm on the last day of a very long weekend and finally got to cleanup my laptop files and saw the album where the  photo above was in.  This was from June of last year, on a retro-themed party that my day job had to celebrate our first year celebration.  Everyone was dressed up and I didn't really know what to wear (and I didn't really care too much).  So I just dug some of my dad's old clothes and found an old-school styled corduroy jacket, got some old sunglasses and thought I'll wear that and bring my 80's film camera and hopefully look like an  80's photojournalist.  Then I had the idea of loading the camera up with film and see what kind of shots I get.

I brought a Canon A-1 with a 24mm f/2.8 lens.  I also had a Canon  166A flash from the 70's.  I loaded it up with roll of Kodak ASA 400 and a roll of ASA 200.  I chose the 400 since I knew it was going to be really dark inside and the 200 is for photos outside the function room.  The 24mm was wide enough to get the group performance in my frame, but the flash wasn't as powerful as I thought, as the light didn't reach far back.  The flash was full auto, but had an aperture calculator at the back.  So what you do is you input what ASA you're using and how far the subject is (from the camera), then it gives you 2 aperture/shutter speed combination to choose from, 2.8 for some nice depth of field, and a 5.6 for focus on more areas.

I really like the shots that I got.  There's a different feel when you see the results from a film, fully manual camera. You won't understand it unless you have shot film. Focusing in low light was really difficult but as you get used to where a subject falls on an area of focus, you just shoot away.  I love the grain on these, and can never be matched by your usual photoshop grain.

I thought it was a perfect way of capturing the images for the given theme.  It was a great night as I remembered.


Now, let's try to get that look in digital.....

rb