Most professional or seasoned photographers would recommend any budding photographer to learn about film photography and developing their own film. There’s good reason for this, too: It teaches you discipline, makes you focus and refine on your composition for a photo, and gives you a more intimate relationship with photography. On top of that, film photography has been making a resurgence in popular culture lately, so there’s tons of options.

Now, I don’t have too much of a history in working with film. I’ve used apps like Huji to replicate the aesthetic of film photography, and I’ve messed around with disposable cameras, but nothing that I would really consider actually “working” on my film photography skills. Part of it is simply because I didn’t have the equipment, and making the investment in a film camera plus the actual film and expenses associated with a darkroom was pretty daunting to me. I didn’t want to make the investment only to discover I didn’t enjoy it.

Luckily, part of that investment has recently been offset for me, so I’m planning to start my film photography journey as soon as possible. My grandad is a huge photography enthusiast, and has amassed quite the collection of film and digital cameras and lenses, as well as accessories, over the years. He decided to clean out shop and get rid of some of his lesser used equipment, and asked if I would be interested. I, of course, jumped at the offer.

I just received two packages from him in the mail a few days ago, and I’m so excited to get started. He sent a couple of camera bodies, a couple different lenses, some filters, camera straps, an external flash, and a few other accessories that I’m super amped for (one of which includes an x-ray proof bag for film that can be used to protect film from exposure at airport security). There’s still some research to be done on what I still need. For example, I still need to match lenses to bodies to see what I can use. I need to purchase batteries, and obviously, film. However, this is the closest I’ve been to actually starting film photography, and with the extra time on my hands I want to make the most out of it.

Now, this is an introductory blogpost. Obviously, it’s a bit shorter than some of my other posts, but I’ll be posting more under the tag #filmjourney. I already have some other blog posts in mind, including a baseline film photography post and some film basics. Let me know if you’d like to see a tour of some of what my grandad sent me as well.

Until next time!