Jason Morrison
An odd thing happened once I had access to a Sony 7RIV and that was not wanting to go out and shoot with it. For longer than I can recall, I had wanted to upgrade my Nikon D700 but always ended up spending the money elsewhere. A few months ago, I actually packaged up all of my Nikon gear and shipped it off, selling it. It was a bittersweet moment for me since I have had all of that gear for about 20 years. The D700 has been with me from coast to coast across the U.S. and even into Costa Rico. It has endured just about all weather I could throw at it. I was shocked that I would be emotional parting ways with it, but the truth of the matter is that I was.
Lately, I have had a renewed interest in shooting film. In my home office, I look at four shelves while I work, all of which are loaded with a variety of cameras. Most of the cameras I have, I have never even shot. Some do not work, some I will find out soon enough.
We took a short trip to the mountains for a break and I made it a point to leave all of the digital stuff at home. I had a few frames left on the Holga and a roll of Lomochrome Purple that I wanted to shoot. I also had a couple of shots left on the Polaroid. I normally take a Canon A-1 with me to shoot 35mm, but this time I thought about trying something else. I grabbed my wife’s old Nikon One Touch 100 and a Minolta AL. For both of the 35mm cameras, I grabbed a few rolls of the Kroger expired color print film I had on hand.
With the One Touch camera, I did my best not to hang on to shots. Typically, I am hesitant to shoot a lot with film once it is loaded because I am limited to the number of shots I have available. With the point-and-shoot, I tried to fire away whenever I wanted to. My daughters went over to the local basketball court at their school to play so I snagged some shots of that, something I might not have done in the past. I messed around a bit some different shots knowing full well that these photos might not come out at all.
After the trip to the mountains and a short trip shooting yesterday afternoon, I finished off 2 rolls of 35mm and 2 rolls of 120. My oldest had bought a disposable camera so all of this is getting tossed into a package and heading off to State Film Lab.
Waiting on the film to be developed is the hardest part. State Film is busy so these won’t come back right away, but that is part of the fun. One nifty service State Film offers is a digital contact sheet. For nerds like me, this means that my 120 film scans can now include the borders, so it is worth paying extra for.
Fingers crossed that all the film wasn’t ruined with my inability to use it properly. Also, I would love to start blogging a little more about shooting, editing, etc. No idea how that will work out, given my busy schedule, but I am going to give it a shot anyway.