Getting Back Into Film Photography

I’ve mentioned this before but one of my many hobbies is photography. Around 2013, I was shooting a ton of film. I had my mom’s Pentax K1000, a few of my grandpa's old cameras, and a Point and Shoot that I got off eBay and I was putting them through their paces. There’s just something different about using a film camera. One big difference is that it costs a lot more to buy film and have it developed, even in 2013. Having just graduated college, I was still figuring out my finances and needless to say I didn’t have the money to be spending it on a hobby like film photography. So I stopped.

Fast forward to a few months ago, I was scrolling through YouTube and was recommended Benj Haisch’s video “The $50 Film Camera That You Should Actually Buy.” Spoiler: he talks about the Kodak Ektar H35 Half Frame Film Camera. Half Frame? I’d never heard of it before but the tl;dr is it’s a 35mm frame cut in half, so you get twice as many pictures on a normal roll of film. That sounded like a nice hack to getting twice as many film photos for the price of one.

The camera and a few rolls of film showed up on my doorstep two days later, and I quickly burned through them. The photos came out pretty good but a lot of them were slightly off in terms of composition. That’s because the H35 is a range finger and you’re not looking through the lens like an SLR, which bummed me out a little.

And yet again on another night, I was recommended Matt Day’s video “Olympus Pen FT - Shooting 35mm half frame”. The Pen FT is an SLR, I had to have it, and it showed up in 3 weeks because I bought it on eBay and it came from Japan. I’ve been shooting with this thing consistently since the day I got it. There’s just something about it that makes me want to pick it up and shoot. It just feels good in my hands and the sound the shutter makes is awesome. And the pictures aren’t too shabby either.

So I’d found a way to get a better bang for my buck with the film, but what about developing? Turns out YouTube had something for me there as well - Cinestill’s “The Simplest Way to Develop Black and White Film at Home.” I had a "treat yo' self" moment on Black Friday and knocked down a kit.

It’s been super fun and rewarding to learn this part of the process. I plan to keep shooting more film and hope to try developing color film in the near future.

For now, here’s some shots of Natty and I’s New years trip to Paso Robles for some wine tasting. All of these are shot with my Olympus Pen FT using the F.Zuiko 38mm f1.4 on Kentmere 100 and developed in CineStill’s DF96 Monobath. I hope you enjoy them!

My stylish copilot.

There's just something interesting about two scenes side by side that are just slightly different.

Just rows and rows of grapevines.

Highly recommend checking out Clos Solène if you're in Paso Robles.

Got an interesting triple exposure on this one. Sometimes when the film isn't wound tight in my camera, the film comes off the sprockets and doesn't wind forward completely. It can be quite annoying/frustrating but this one turned out pretty cool.