Journey to Becoming a Film Photographer | What I Learned From My Second and Third Roll

December 4, 2019

After learning some pretty big do’s and don’ts with my very first roll of film I attempted to fill up a couple more rolls and see if I could improve some things… and I think the verdict is much better this time around!

I would say about a third of the rolls are still really off (completely blurry, too dark, etc.) but the other two thirds are actually decent!! Which is giving me more hope on this whole “becoming a film photographer” dream! Especially since all of these are only with my little $100 Canon ae-1 camera 🙂 But none-the-less I have a loooooong way to go still!

For cyber Monday I snagged Nancy Ray’s Foundations in Film course that I’ll hopefully be diving in here soon to learn alllll the things!

But for now I thought I’d share a couple things with you that I believe helped me in the second and third go around with my film rolls.

#1: Shooting in sun makes a world of difference!

Usually with digital it’s nice to have that golden sunlight hitting your subjects back, but I also love myself some full on shade to make the lighting even from head to toe. But with film it’s so different. It’s CRAZY forgiving with the sun. I honestly couldn’t believe how well the ones of my friends Leah + Steph turned out when they were standing with the sun fully on their back. Those actually ended up being my favorites!

#2: Adjust your ISO to be under what your film is calling for.

I can’t take credit for this. I learned it from Leah (who’s also dabbling with her film camera)! She mentioned that in her research, people talked about doing that to kind of trick the camera into letting more light in. And I think it really helped! It made it so that I didn’t have to turn my aperture down as much with allowed me to have a bit more clear pictures. So for example, I was shooting with Fuji Pro 400. So technically I should have set my ISO at 400, but instead I set it at 200 🙂 The camera thinks it needs to let more light in because of the lower ISO. Sweet huh?

#3: Hold very, very still… and don’t breathe.

I’m actually kind of serious about this one haha! I keep finding myself not breathing while I’m shooting, because any slight movement can be the difference between a clear and blurry photo. Now granted your settings need to be right and your aperture can’t be super low, but even when it’s spot on I found it’s best if I can be incredibly still. Definitely assuming that’s mostly because of the grade of camera I have though 🙂 But I’ve heard that some film photographers will hold their breath when they’re getting the shot.

So basically if I start getting light-headed at sessions/weddings, I’ll know why 😉

It’s been so fun to tap into a world that I’ve admired for so long! Low-key putting it on my 2020 goal sheet to become a true hybrid film photographer by the end of the year. And since I just put it in writing guess I have to go out and do it now 😉

Hope you enjoy some of my favorites from my last two rolls! And if you want to see some digital/film comparisons, head to the bottom to see if you can tell the difference!