My first ever camera I bought with my own money was a Fuji. It was a Fujifilm x100T and though it was far from perfect, all that I cared about was the ergonomics. Ergonomics is the sole reason that I bought that camera despite being a broke college student as my previous camera was a Sony loaned to me from my brother (I hated going into the menu just to change SS and aperture, it was killing me). The Fuji was perfect, external shutter dials and aperture ring made more sense to me. This led me to a fascination on the ergonomics and simplicity of the old film cameras but to buy a proper film camera was out of the question at that time. I did have a film camera that time but it was a Lomography Konstruktor which had a fixed shutter speed and aperture but that was not enough.
It wasn’t until I decided to climb a mountain which is another long story reserved for another post and I met a photojournalist who had a Canonet QL-III around her neck and we got in contact with each other through email. It was through her encouragement that I start to seriously considered to shoot film but her main message to me was to learn the whole workflow from shooting to developing and scanning/printing. So I did that, got my film camera, bought a scanner and finally a developing kit. I spent around three years perfecting the whole workflow (I started a business and developed around 20 rolls a week at most) and it was only after a few months after I felt that I got the whole thing perfected or near perfected, I sold all my serious film gear. I felt that I have nothing left to learn from shooting film and I believe it was the right call. Shooting film used to bring a great sense of joy to me once but not anymore. The film crowd has changed here and I just don’t feel like I belong. The community feels more exclusive now instead of inclusive. I’ll stop there.
So here we are again, back to digital photography. Back to where I started except this time, I know how to make a photograph instead of just clicking the shutter aimlessly.
Until then,
Exploration Cycles 