35mm film camera

Among other hobbies of mine which drain money from my wallet, I have a modest collection of old cameras. Not to turn this into RichardsPhotoBlog, but most of the cameras take 120 (medium format) film, utilizing a negative that is roughly 4 times the size of a 35mm negative. Everything being equal, the larger the negative, the more detail which can be captured. However, these old cameras (3 of my favorites date from the decades of the 1940s and ‘50s) have inferior lenses compared to “modern” film cameras. These cameras are also completely manual in operation: there are no batteries installed, no light meters, no (gasp!) auto-focus. Yet the larger negatives can produce results which a technically better 35mm camera cannot. Part of the fun is to see if I can A) load film into them; B) operate the controls; and C) produce acceptable images.

I’m not the first with this idea (check out Murilee Martin, who’s carved out a corner of the Internet by combining his passions for cars and film photography) , but when I remember to bring an old camera, I’ve enjoyed using it to photograph show cars. This all came to mind recently when I uncovered a few envelopes of prints. My photos go into albums in somewhat chronological order, and I had not attended to that task in several years. Hence, the subject of this week’s blog post. The pictures I found had been taken during the summer of 2021, when I attended 3 different events, each time with a film camera in tow. Posted below are samples of the results. There is definitely a softness, a color shift, an old-world quality to film that digital does not possess. I did use an older (1981) 35mm film camera for some of the snaps, and I’ve indicated that below. See what you think compared to the cold perfection of digital.