I’ve always dreamed about what it must be like to shoot film. I’d look at photos by the likes of portra_papi and wish “Man, I wanna take photos like that.”
If you wish for something with all your heart, the entire universe will conspire to make sure your wish comes true. Says not I, but Om Prakash Makhija.
In this case, the universe conspired on the day my uncle was moving houses. He found an ancient Kodak Kroma35 (also sold as VR35 in many countried) in his old military trunk.
Of course I had to try it out. It was in good condition. Pranav’s wedding was coming up soon. So I bought the cheapest film I could find - a roll of respooled Kodak Vision 250D from CPB, popped it in, and took it on the road trip to Nashik.
It. Was. Fun.
After coming back from the wedding I still had shots left. This was revealing for me.
On film, every shot is intentional. Its difficult to take too many pictures when you’re shooting intentionally. And boy do you make sure you shoot intentionally, because you know you have a limited number of shots (you can take ~36 shots with one roll). I took only 20-25 shots in two days. Compare that to the digital camera I was carrying - I took hundreds of pictures on it!
Film is expensive. Digital is unlimited.
The “slowness” of film photography is a blessing. It makes you a better photographer. I love this about film.
I took a few more shots back home:
I still could’t finish the roll! So when I took it for processing and scanning to the lab (The Film Lab India in Pune), I took a few last shots there:
I got the photos printed like they used to in the old days - in a small 4x6 inch size that fits in those little albums.
There is something about printed photos… It feels different. It feels good. Photographers, print your photos!
I gifted the album to Pranav and Roshni. They loved it.
I’ve acquired a new old film camera since and already taken it on a trip (am I already addicted to film?). That story’s coming soon, stay tuned! If you’d like to know when I post it, sign up for email updates below.
Thanks for reading and see you soon!
PS: I had to do quite a bit of fixing in Lightroom to get the colors to look like this. The files I got from the lab just didn’t look great. Maybe it was the lab, maybe it was the camera. Anyway, I’ve found another lab (The Panchrome Project) for processing my next roll, we’ll see how that goes!
