My old film photos

Chapters

1. Prologue

2. Dissonance

3. Retrospect

4. Revival

5. Epilogue

Prologue

I love film photographs.

The colors, the texture, grain, the way film handles saturation and highlight roll offs, and everything else that comes with the final result.

Shooting it, not so much.

Just the thought of lugging around a tripod makes me shiver.

The ongoing cost, the uncertainty, and the seemingly dwindling supply of film variety doesn’t help.

For a few years now, I’ve been trying to avoid it.

I kept finding ways to “emulate” the real thing.

I’ve tried everything. From film sims, to presets, to CCD sensors, to Dehancer and everything in between.

I keep trying to perfect my “emulations”, but in the end even if it looks good, I’ll always know that it’s not “the real thing”.

I’ve been frustrated with the look of my photographs lately. As you know, I went back to photo editing from Fujifilm simulations for a few months now, trying to perfect the “look” of my photos. But that seemed to be an endless exercise in futility.

The other day, I opened up my folder of old film photos I’ve taken. Looking through them, despite my mediocrity compositional skills of a few years ago, some of them just feel so damn magical anyways. And then suddenly it just seems clear to me:

I have to shoot film again.

Today I want to show you some of these photos I made, and talk about the whats and the whys of these changes I’m making.

Dissonance

I had a lot of fun shooting my few rolls of film on my Canonet QL19 for a short while. Then I stopped.

It didn’t really make sense back then, when I didn’t know which direction I wanted to go with my art, and just happy to shoot whatever.

But now it seems like everything is a bit more clear to me. I feel like there’s something burning in my mind that I want to “express” through my photos. I feel like I’m starting to have a better idea of what I want to put in my frames. It seems like I just didn’t have the right “medium”, and film is probably the one.

Jason Grainydays (yup, calling him that from now on), say it best: when I look at film photos it feels like I’m pouring into a memory.

Digital is just too clean and accurate and clinical for the themes and the feels I want to make: moody, nostalgic, and “unrealistic”, if that makes sense. Reality is kinda boring to me. I want my photos to feel a bit more… like a fantasy.

Obviously a digital raw file can be anything you want, but I just can’t seem to make it work.

…

Sometimes you can sell the idea that a shot looks like film. Fuji recipes are an example, I guess. In the right setting, lighting conditions, colors, etc, a recipe can look quite good, to the point where you can almost fool people.

But in another condition, everything might look pretty off and terrible. I think this is because film interacts with light differently from digital, which is “always the same”. Hence, one film stock might have different “looks” and feel in different conditions, but one recipe, or one color grade, will always be the same across the board. That means sometimes a recipe will look completely “wrong” and “unnatural” than how film would have looked like. You just have to judge the look of a digital grade in a case to case basis.

Retrospect

When I examine the film photos I’ve shot (and from others) closely, there’s this physicality that’s hard to explain and even harder to replicate. The way colors are represented. The grain pattern. The way film interacts with light, sometimes unpredictably.

Looking at these, I actually wondered why I ever stopped shooting film in the first place. Like, damn. The highs are just so much higher than anything I’ve ever seemed to achieve with my digital shots.

No more fiddling with editing and being frustrated of out my own incompetence.

Digital can look good. Many people more talented than me have done it. The vibrant pastel tones of Visualsbypreet, or the bright, airy warm tones of James Popsys, of the layered and stylized looks of Samatha Cavet, are some that popped off on top of my mind. There are more directions to go with digital than just copying film.

But I just want “the film look”, I guess.

Film vs digital to me is like, say oil painting vs digital painting. One is not necessarily better than the other. Just different process, workflow, and outcome.

With film, there’s also no more “changing my mind” and “fix it in post”. I think at the end of my “digital era”, I started getting lazy and just have this mentality of “I’ll make this look good later, somehow”.

Fuji recipes used to alleviate this problem for me somewhat, but in the end recipes are just too “hit or miss” for me.

You know what the best thing is? No more fumbling around with white balance. I find white balance to be one the most frustrating things about digital photography. I just can’t seems to find the right WB many times, especially at night, auto or not.

At least most of the time anyways. Sometimes film has weird color casts in certain lightings that you might want to correct, but it’s rare. Maybe when you self-scan, there are more latitude to change things up, but lab scans have been great for me so far.

My favorite film stock, Vision3 500T, is a tungsten balanced film, and I shoot it at daytime all the time anyways, and it looks beautiful in my opinion (most of these photos are shot with Vision3 500T).

Last but not least… it seems like every minute I spent editing a photo, a bit of magic is lost on me, eventually to the point that all my photos just look kinda boring, and I just cant make them look good. I guess this is how I keep my sanity.

Revival

I could spend many more days and weeks trying to edit my photos. Trying to match the beautiful textured grain. The beautiful colors. The beautiful contrast and saturation and highlight roll-offs. And then inevitably get frustrated because it’s never going to be the real thing. The “digital” look is still going to be there, in my head if anything. 

Or I could just have the real thing. So I’m getting the real thing.

Now, shooting film is definitely a lot more involved than digital. And yeah, film is quite expensive. And more cumbersome. And annoying at times. Can I get optical stabilization in film anyways.

And yeah. That also means no more changing my mind in post. Converting to black and white because color didn’t work (well technically you CAN do it, just kinda feels sacrilegious 😂). Cropping 10000% in to get the perfect composition. But I guess like that scene in The Dark Knight Rises, you gotta take of the safety cable if you want to jump high. Let the fear of death guide you and what not.

Maybe, just maybe, the pay off is worth it in the end.

Epilogue

Side note #1: I’m quite sad though that most Fujifilm film stocks have recently slowly been discontinued, despite the revival in analog photography in the last few years. I think those would fit very well in Asia environments. Seems like they have, for the most part, abandoned this legacy as a film maker.

All we have left are film simulations in their digital cameras. And while I do love these sims too, in the end it’s still “lacking” something for me. The beautiful cool tones and greens of real Fujifilm film stocks like, say the Fujicolor C200 is just unmatched. The new ones I heard are just rebranded Kodak stuff, just doesn’t have the same effect.

Side note #2: With film gear, somehow I feel like I can be more reckless with my cameras. My favorite piece of gear so far is the original Olympus XA, and I kinda want to baby that a bit because it’s a bit rare, but otherwise SLR film gear is relatively cheap and easy to find so far, even in Vietnam. I’m getting a Canon A1, which has more electronics in it, but I’ll probably get a Canon F1 some day and that thing is more “tanky”.

Even if something broke then so be it, I’ll just get something else to replace. Canon SLRs are like 50-100 bucks a piece at most, usually. Canon FD lenses are quite cheap too. I already got a set of primes from when I adapted them on Sony like 8-9 years ago. I also just bought a 24-35mm f3.5 because I started liking wide angles now, which is a bit harder to find. Ideally I wanted the 20-35mm f3.5, but that is more expensive and even harder to find, so I just settled on the former. Still on the look out for that 20-35 though.

Side note #3: Actually, can you get an EOS film camera and put stabilized EOS lenses on it? Or the Nikon F5/F6 and their modern lenses. Huh. I mean it’s definitely not as sexy, using, say an EOS body and EF lenses vs using a mechanical piece of metal hunk, but that is certainly a very intriguing idea! EOS lenses are so widely available and pretty affordable too.

Anyways, for once, maybe I’ll have something interesting to talk about again in this newsletter.

I’m already blowing all my savings on a bunch of film gears and film stocks. I’ve shot a test roll again just yesterday before I finish this post, waiting for it to be developed.

My bank account absolutely hates me right now, but for once, I’m quite excited to see what’s next.

Until next time,

Peter.

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