Whenever I whip out my digital SLR to take a photo, my mom likes to remind me: “Don’t waste your shots!” I chortle and tell her this is not a film camera and I can take a virtually unlimited number of shots. She doesn’t understand.
My mom came from an era of analog cameras, where people worked with 36 exposures a roll; the concept of SD cards and a “Delete” button was foreign. My mom was careful with her shots. She wouldn’t have taken a photo of every #eatclean #fitspo smoothie she had. She wouldn’t have taken a photo of every #ootd (i.e. “outfit of the day”). She took photos of stuff she really liked, like me and my brothers. Like our dad throwing us in the air. Like us on our birthdays. Like us on our family vacations.
She obviously never made the switch from a film camera to a digital one.
I hardly had a chance to use a film camera. When I was young, I was a destructive monster – my mom was right to guard her camera from me. As I grew older and into a more responsible teenager, I received my first pocket digital camera at 16. It was a Canon Ixus. I loved it for the following two years. But I began to get frustrated – I wanted more control over my shots; I wanted better photos; I wanted a DSLR. But I couldn’t afford one then and the alternative presented to me was a SLR, albeit in its non-digital, analog form. Fine, I said to myself. I’ll just give it a go. And a secondhand Minolta X-700 was purchased.
Ta-dah!
I fell in love with it. Hard. I began to view photography in a whole new light – it was art. It taught me, perhaps, even a way of life. The moment before you click the shutter is a moment of meditation. You pause, you think, you contemplate. And it is that meditative experience that brings new meaning to a shot.
Here are some shots I took last September in Sydney with the Contax T2, a new (non-SLR) film camera I’d bought then:
But film photography is a dying art. After all, it is more cost-efficient to shoot with digital cameras in the long run. Major film manufacturers have been cutting back on film production; the complete cessation of film production is probably a matter of time. When that time comes, it will be a sad day and film enthusiasts around the world will mourn in unison… But until then, I’m a very lucky girl, to have been able to experience the magic film cameras afford.