My Sane and Totally Justifiable Film Obsession
I started shooting on film cameras some time around 2015 with a Leica IIIa I picked up on a trip. I shot Fiji film purchased from Walmart and Ultrafine Extreme purchased in bulk from Photo Warehouse. The Leica did not work well and Photo Warehouse No longer makes the Ultrafine Extreme brand of film. I did find Nikon Rangefinders to my liking and eventually made the dive into medium format and tried a variety of films along the way. While this often lead to good results, It did have the side effect of creating a large and excessive collection of cameras, as can be seen below with a basic selection of commonly used 50mm and 35mm lenses, not including the many alternate lenses, view finders and light meters that go along with them. This obsession lead down many paths including a brief extent period where i made my own camera straps, a few of which can be sen below.
Since I began to dive head first into film, I have shot a variety of film stocks to varying degrees of success. While I like color especially Kodak Gold and Ektar (really dislike Portra despite its popularity), the ease of developing black and white film at home has driven me to shoot far more in monochrome. I can not claim to be an expert at developing and frequently have question I can not find answers to, I have gotten to a point where my development is adequate and consistent with occasional errors that heir on the side of art more than flaw. Over time the quirks of lenses older than I am along with “flaws” and '“surprises” in developing have come to interest me far more than digital images which seem to be largely indistinguishable regardless of which camera or lens were used in their making.
I don’t have a very consistent subject matter or style in any rectifiable sense, but to me that is freeing and doesn’t stop me from trying things out of the ordinary. Film is not cheap or fast, few would call it easy but I always seem to return to it despite bad shots entire rolls mis developed or dusty scans. Despite the limitations I enjoy the finite nature of a single roll being limited to 36 frames, I enjoy the wait for developing, and I always look forward to laying eyes on the final results which seem all the more meaningful with all the patients required to that point.
I have considered moving to an all film set up for personal shooting. Using the Nikon rangefinders for a lot of black and white shooting on a decent stock of asa 200 or 400 film. I would like to keep the film stock very consistent so I can calculate sunny 16 and not have to rely on meter readings as I too often do. and occasional color rolls on a dedicated setup like the black 2005 SP and its multicoated 35mm f1.8 lens that offer great color results. While shooting color only on the Mamiya 7 for some deserving subjects. This might even push me to sell my FM2 and My Alpa 6a which is my only “collectors” camera just to keep things somewhat simple. While I have yet to make this rather extreme jump the idea is one I have considered for a while not, and I think I am likely to focus more on film, making an SP my main camera even if I do in all likelihood keep at least one digital camera for convince and video recording purposes.
In the end I only have to justify my choices to my self. In my mind what ever I can make the most meaningful images with not the greatest number of images of the lowest effort images with is generally the right choice for me.