Daily Monday

Experimenting with a film camera

Written by

Rin

in

,

I’ve always had this thing for vintage/analog stuff. So far I’ve played around with polaroid and this time, I decided to try out film. I’ve seen my parents use old film cameras when I was still small. I remember going to photo studios just to get it developed. It was a fun process. Then it just disappeared all of a sudden and got replaced with digital.

Then I noticed that the first polaroid camera brand I bought, Lomography, also sells film cameras. It was on sale as well, so I decided to purchase it. I got a normal version (featured in this post) and a fisheye camera that I have yet to test out.

I got a camera from the La Sardina series. It’s modelled after a sardine can, which is really cute. The set comes with a flash and different color filters. I had to purchase the film rolls separately, though. I got the ISO 400 film.

I immediately experimented with it but never got the chance to develop the film since there weren’t any photo studios around where I live. I had to send the raw film to my friend who lives in Osaka and have him develop it there. Sadly, a few days after the pictures are done, that photo studio itself closed down forever. So now I gotta look for a new studio to develop my future films.

Anyways, here are some of the (sad) results.

As you can see, I still suck at taking pics. The images are all blurry since I didn’t hold the camera properly haha. But I like how the blurriness adds to the charm.

This is a shot of my friend that unexpectedly turned well. Lol.

Notice that the picture got cut off on the left side. Actually, I did a very stupid mistake of exposing the negatives to the light before I got it developed. So half of the roll was damaged and only pictures that I took after this strip was salvageable. It would’ve been great if this whole scene was complete, though. Never again expose undeveloped negatives to light.

I’m liking the first batch of results even though it’s not the best. Taking pictures with these cameras always fill me with excitement since you cannot 100% plan your composition and the outcomes are full of surprises. I’m definitely looking forward to take more pics with this and eventually try out the fisheye version!

Comments

2 responses to “Experimenting with a film camera”

  1. Hanako Avatar
    Hanako

    I use to have a film camera probably until I was in 6th grade, so I was probably 12 years old? I could have had it longer than that, but I don’t remember very well. I remember driving my mom crazy about getting the pictures developed at the store. I think your camera is very adorable! I would love to get one, but I’m buying a digital kids camera for my daughter. She loves taking photos, and is surprisingly good at it. I can’t say I miss film cameras though. They’re not as detailed as digitals are. In fact, my phone takes great photos versus my old digital. lol But I do agree that there’s definitely charm using film cameras and Polaroids. I still want an instax or something similar mostly for my bujo. It would be nice to take my own pix and stick it in my journal. I was and am still looking at KiiPix Smartphone Picture Printer. Anyways, I think your photos turned out great! People add blurriness filters all the time, so it’s perfect!

    Also, I found a copy of “Normal People”, so I plan on reading it soon!

    Reply
    1. Rin Avatar
      Rin

      I would say a picture printer would be a better solution for your bujo! Polaroids can get really expensive and bulky for a bujo, sadly.

      I just got a copy of the book delivered to my mailbox today! I’ve read the first few chapters and I think the narrative style is really distinctive as it doesn’t have proper quotations to separate between dialogues and the narration itself. I found it quite confusing and a bit difficult to follow at first, but now I think I got used to it haha.

      Reply

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