Oh, film photography, my life’s greatest love. I honestly could sit here for hours and talk about how much I love film and all the great things that happened to my creativity and business because of it. Instead, I’m hoping that if you’re reading this post, you’re already well acquainted with the beauty of film and are looking for ways to jump into it yourself.
When I jumped into film photography back in 2015, I had no idea what I was doing. I knew that I loved the way film looked, I loved shooting film back in high school, and I was determined to learn this craft even if it was the death of me. As you can imagine, I made so many damn mistakes initially. I ran forward without a care in the world until I eventually burned out from lack of knowledge and frustration.
Over the years, I’ve been able to learn from so many others and learned to refine my craft, and now that I am in a place where shooting film is like second nature, I want to be able to help all the other film lovers out there who are ready to dive in themselves. Because of this, here are my top tips for getting started with film. Plus, the mindset you should have when beginning your journey with film.
Are you excited yet? Let’s jump in!
Go Slow
When I finally leaped to shoot film, I dove headfirst in, and legit got crazy with it. I bought all the cameras, photographed all the film, and made many mistakes. So, let me be the first to tell you that learning to shoot film isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon. Shooting film is an investment, and you got to pace yourself.
One of the areas where you need to pace yourself the most is with the process of shooting film. As you can imagine, the film isn’t cheap, and if you’re transitioning from digital, you’re probably used to shooting as many pictures as your SD Card can candle.
Changing your frame of mind from unlimited images to only 16 or 35 images at a time can be quite a shift. Therefore, I highly recommend starting slow when you’re shooting. Take your time and enjoy the process of finding the best angle, searching for the perfect location, and snapping your picture.
Putting time and thought into your images allows you to slow down and be more intentional about what you’re shooting and precisely what you want the outcome of your pictures to be.
Shoot 35mm
If you’re already a fan of film photography, you might want to invest in a medium format camera and start there. Medium format film is unlike anything else; it produced some gorgeous images that I have ever taken, but when you’re first starting, you want to go down a road where you’ll get more bang for your buck.
Medium format rolls of film only give you 16 pictures; that’s less than half of what you’ll get with shooting 35mm!! So, my advice is to stick to 35mm. The cameras are often cheaper, and at 35 images per roll, you get more breathing room to experiment and shoot!
Use a Professional Lab
When I started, my local Walgreens was still doing a one-day turnaround for film photography, and that was how I started my film journey. But after I sent several rolls to Walgreens, I got frustrated with how my images were coming out. My pictures didn’t look anything like what other people posted on Instagram! I got so upset that I gave up on my film journey for several months!
So, take it from me that sending your film scans to a professional lab is SO IMPORTANT, especially when starting, because every roll counts when it comes to feedback and learning your film technique. The first time I sent my film scans to my professional lab, Photovision Prints, I was blown away by the results that I got back!
Ask Questions
Not asking questions was probably one of the biggest mistakes I could have made when I first started. However, I could have cut my trial and error efforts by so much if I had just reached out to other fellow film photographers and asked questions! And the best place to ask questions is with your lab!
They are trained and specialize in film, and if you’re looking for a specific look, they are the people to ask when it comes to working towards and achieving your film goals. And not to toot my own horn, but you can always reach out to me for questions. I may know a thing or two!
One Roll at a Time
When I first started, I got crazy and started shooting up a storm, only to realize that I had shot so many rolls on a $20 broken camera that I had bought off eBay. It’s safe to say that very few of those images turned out if any, and I had wasted so much money using several rolls of professional film on a broken camera. Oops.
So take it one roll at a time. I know it can be hard to work one roll at a time because you’re excited and want to keep shooting but trust me, it will save you so much time in the long run. If I could start over, I would have done just one roll of a few different film stocks in a few locations to see what I like most about each film stock and place.
Manual Focus
If you’re transitioning from shooting digital, you are probably like most digital populations and rely heavily on autofocus. Unfortunately, with film, you can’t use autofocus. Not unless you want a bunch of blurry and out-of-focus images. Film cameras don’t have the speed that digital cameras have when shooting with autofocus.
If you rely on letting your camera choose what to focus on, you’ll miss the focus or the moment you want to shoot due to your autofocus taking too long. So take it from me and all the blurry images that I took, and start utilizing the manual focus. If you’re not used to shooting manual, this can be quite a shock.
You’ll find that learning to trust your eye when it comes to focusing can be scary and take quite a long time. Because of this, I recommend practicing your manual focusing on still life subjects. Plants, flowers, buildings, etc. When I first tried to develop the focusing skills, I did it with my kids—not good folks. Kids don’t sit still, even when you’ve thrown all the fart jokes and promises of candy their way.
It may be hard at first, but I promise, if you continue to stick with manual focusing and keep practicing, it’ll soon become just like second nature, and you won’t even have to think twice about doing it!
Overall, it’s essential to understand that starting your film photography journey is an investment. You’ll have to put in some money and a lot of hours of learning and training on how to adapt to this new way of shooting. But trust me, once you get the hang of it, you will LOVE the results you get.
When I had started, I noticed I trusted myself and my artistic eye more than I trusted the back of my camera. When you use film, you develop yourself as an artist and build trust within yourself and your creative ability to photograph. It sounds cheesy, but sometimes a little cheese isn’t such a bad thing, now is it?
So, friends, did this help you out? Are you motivated to go out there and start shooting film?! Please leave any questions in the comments below or shoot me an email!
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