Just before Christmas I wrote about finding a camera I hadn't used for years and finishing the slide film that was in it. I also found a 35mm film cassette. It turned out that the lone cassette was empty! The film in the camera finally came back from the lab - with a note saying the film hadn't been stored correctly. No surprise there. The pictures were awful. Two here could have been okay had the film been in top condition. One I've converted to black and white because it was the only way to salvage anything from it.
I'm still trying to finish off a roll of black and white I put in my Pentax in the spring of last year. Using the camera today (I took two frames) I realised that part of the attraction of film (for me) is the physical use of the camera. Winding on the film and cocking the shutter just feels good. It seems to connect me to the picture making process. The slide film was in a motorised compact and it wasn't anywhere near as pleasing to use. In fact it felt quite like shooting a digital compact. The noise the mirror of the Pentax makes when it thunks back down is so more pleasing than the rattle of a DSLR shutter and mirror too. Is this just nostalgia? Is it some wierd nostalgia that makes people debase their photos to look aged?
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