Pretending to Photograph with Film - with results!

It inspired me to do a similar project as I just love shooting film but sometimes the whole process can be so long that I get impatient! I wanted to give it a go and see if I could replicate the feeling I get when I shoot film, which I just love, with a normal SLR camera. When I pick up a film camera its a whole different feeling than picking up my Canon, I think because I use my Canon's for work that when I pick it up I almost go into work mode and can't really relax and sit back and wait for the shots to appear... I have to go hunt for them constantly! That's why I always take out a film camera with me too, sometimes its my Nikon FM2 but sometimes its just a Holga. It varies which ones I use depending on what I am taking a photograph of too, which really baffles me! Why should it matter?! My brain just sees something and thinks "oh that would be way better on a film camera" and I have no idea where this comes from, does anyone else do the same?? Is it because a seemingly boring shot might come out really cool with film? I'm not sure, but I wanted to see if that feeling I get when I think something is going to look so good on film can be brought over onto my digital camera. It was hard at first, I went out on a pretty bleak day so no really bright colours or anything that was jumping out at me, but I kept walking and just tried to imagine that I was holding my Nikon FM2 instead of my Canon and suddenly I was looking at things a little differently. I was looking at the atmosphere of the scene rather than the colours, I was thinking that a wider aperture might bring out the small amount of mist in the distance. As I started to frame the shots I got really still and took my time to frame each one, of course as it would be on film you'd only have 36 or so images so I wanted to pretend that I didn't have hundreds of goes at getting it right! I also didn't check the back of my camera, which is incredibly hard not to do!! I 100% trust my exposures most of the time so the need to check the back of the camera is really out of habit, but I think because its also my job to get good shots at weddings I really have to double check the back of the camera just to make sure! It was hard not to do this, but also made me quite excited to get back home and check what I had taken, and if they were in focus haha! Thinking about it now I should have put the camera on manual focus, but I wasn't thinking and left it on auto - which I guess is slightly cheating the whole "like film" technique! So next time I will put it on manual! I used the cheapest lens I have which is the 50mm 1.8, its such a sharp awesome lens and is made out of plastic so really easy to carry around. I have a 50mm film camera lens too so it made it quite an east comparison!

As I made my way further into the forest area I found that I was noticing the subtle light changes on the trees and on the shadows on the floor. I really was starting to feel like I had a film camera instead of my digital. The hardest thing was just taking one shot, my moto has always been "if a shot if worth taking once, its worth taking twice!" and of course you can still take more than one with a film camera and use more film but I wanted to try and just take one and see what they came out like. It was interesting trying to expose for different brightness of light but I quite enjoyed the challenge. While I was taking these I had in my mind that I wanted them all to be in black and white, I think for me its an easier way to pretend that they are taken on film as I have a few film filter presets to use that would hopefully replicate Ilford pretty well! I think knowing that they would be in black and white also makes me shoot differently, I start looking at contrast and shapes and forget about the colour all together. Textures especially look so good in black and white.

On such a grey day I was actually really impressed with how much I had managed to find to take photographs of, there is always something!! I need to remember this when I get stuck for ideas and just stand and really look at the scene and see how I can make the most out of it! Even on dark days like this things can look so beautiful!

When I got home I was eager to see what the shots were like, and to my excitement they looked great! I instantly put the black and white filer on them so that I wasn't distracted by what the colours were and tried to pretend this is how they came out of camera! I didn't edit them much just added a bit of contrast to some of them. The filter did a lot to compare to the Ilford film and actually I think these are similar shots to what I would have taken if it was film! So I guess the experiment worked! I actually really enjoyed doing this and will have to go out more often and do the same, its a really good way to use your camera in a different way and also learn how to appreciate the composition and exposures without the camera telling you what to do. I think next time I might try this with colour, as hard as that might be!, and use some other presets for the edits. There is a company called VSCO who do great film emulators for Lightroom, I use quite a few so I think maybe I will use one of those for the next lot.

Anyway I hope you have enjoyed this post and here are the results of this day shooting! :

- Verity x

Photography by me and copyrighted to me.
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