I am taking a stab at film. A few people have already made fun of me like why would I take a step back towards film. The film craze it actually coming back. Film is not dead. The lady I purchased my Canon 5D from was actually selling it (her backup camera) to fund a film camera. I am really excited to put my skills to the real test. The hard part is waiting until the film is developed to know how you did. I am lucky enough that my mom still had her 20 year old 35mm Minolta film camera with a 50mm 1.7 and 60-200mm 3.9 lenses. As anything of my mothers, it is in immaculant shape. She has been toying around with where she could get rid of it at. I finally decided I needed to give it a try. There are a lot of things to get used to….manual focus, correct way to focus and meter for exposure, advancing the film and the touchy shutter button. Now to learn about the film itself. I also love that I now have a long focal length. My longest focal length for my 5D right now is my 85mm 1.8. I was pleasantly surprised to see many Minolta cameras and lenses for sale in the used section at B&H Photo. I did purchase a 28mm 2.8 lens for $39. I was surprised to see the cameras ranged for $100-200 and some lenses from $40-150. I think that is pretty good for a 15-20 year old camera. My plan is to use this as my personal camera to take in the boat, Valley Fair, camping or other places I might not want to take $$$$ worth of equipment to get ruined or stolen. The camera and lenses are actually pretty close in weight to my dSLR, but smaller in size. So I could actually throw it in my purse. I did take my first roll up to our local drug store to have it developed and happy that it works, though the prints were really green. Not sure if that was the cheap Fuji film or more likely the photo printer. I just got some Kodak Porta 400 film in the mail yesterday and am excited to try good film and get it sent off to a pro-film lab to develop and scanned. So many new things to learn. I am excited.
