Why I Still Shoot 35mm Film

edge of the roll. kinda love it

Every few months I put a roll in the camera, shoot it really slowly, and then kind of forget about it. By the time the scans come back I've mostly forgotten what's on there. Which is honestly the best part. It's like getting mail from myself. Slightly confusing mail.

With digital I'll shoot two hundred frames of nothing. With film I don't. Every frame costs money, so I wait a bit. I look longer. Most of the time I don't even take the shot, and that's fine.

didn't pick these colors, film did

one shot at dusk and done

The weird thing is there's no screen. You hit the shutter and that's it, you can't check, you can't fix it. I thought that'd stress me out. It doesn't. I just stop fussing and actually hang out with whoever I'm with.

soft and green and a bit hazy, that's just this roll

And the colors are never what I'd pick. Greens go kind of cool and soft, the bright stuff fades out gently, the shadows get all grainy. I've made so many presets trying to fake this. None of them really get there. Not even close. I gave up, mostly.

neon, crowds, a cat cafe. night film is never clean

the date stamp is wrong. left it

Okay, real talk. Half this roll is blurry lol. The flash is harsh. My horizons are crooked in like every shot. A few years ago I'd have tossed most of these. Now they're my favorites? They feel like the actual night, not a nice photo of it.

straight flash, one try

It's changed how I shoot digital too, for work. I think more before I press anything. I pay way more attention to light, because you can't really save bad light later. And I leave a little mess in sometimes. People seem to like that more than the perfect ones anyway.

Anyway. If you've got a cheap film camera lying around, throw a roll in and don't look at the back of it for a while. See what comes back.

last frame of the night