Film Camera Adventures!

It's been a while since I've used a film camera. Last time I remembered, it was when I was in Secondary School. And that is pretty long time ago. And during that time, the camera's that I used can actually be considered as Point-And-Shoot cameras back then. 

Sample Picture Only

Back then, having a camera can already be considered a luxury. Best thing about back then was that my grandfather from both my mom and dad were also into photography. From my dad side, my grandfather used to own a Canon F-1 while from my mom's side, my grandfather used to use a Yashica A Medium Format Camera. Used to love playing with those cameras back then. 

But since last month, I decided to borrow some of our office's old film camera to test some out while getting the feel of how photography was back then. First Camera I got to play with was a Canon EOS 1000. It has Auto Focus and pretty much all of the functions can be controlled and viewed via the small screen near the shutter button. It was a fine camera to play with but I only got a choice of only two lenses which is the 50mm F1.8 and the 28-80mm F3.5-5.6. But still, it was a fine camera.

The Canon EOS 1000 Film Camera

After that, I went over and borrowed another camera that our office has which was the Nikon FM2. The the great thing about this camera was that there were more Prime Lenses to play with! Some of them are the 35mm f2.8, 28mm f2, 50mm f1.8, 50mm f1.4, 55mm f2.5 Macro, 105mm f2.5 and the 135mm f2.8. Though some of those lenses already have fungus on them, they were still a joy to play with. Actually finished off 5 rolls of film already with that camera. And also not forgetting, it also has it's very own  Battery Pack and forwards the film automatically. The shutter noise from this camera without the battery pack is just nice, but when the Battery pack is connected, the sound of the film forwarding is extremely noisy! Which is why I prefer to use it without the Battery pack most of the time.

The Nikon FM2 with the Battery Pack and a SB600

All and all, playing with these cameras were damn nice and fun. Even got to play with a Leica M3 camera with some prime lenses too. But what I can say is that using film again is not so cost effective. Unless you have your own dark room where you can actually process the film yourself. Imagine processing a roll of film is RM5 without print. Now imagine processing 6 rolls. That's already RM30. And with that RM30, I could already print out more Digital images than the amount of pictures I would get on 6 rolls of film. But do understand that the chemicals used to process the negatives are not cheap nowadays. Seeing that mostly everyone has moved on to Digital photography. As for me, I think I'll stick with my Sony Alpha 700 Digital SLR. Need to save money.

BJS