Gosh, film photography really is an exercise in delayed gratification.
Recently I’ve been kind of sad about the idea that, despite having thousands of pictures of my children, they aren’t recorded on any film negatives at all. The digital record is extensive, and it’s objectively pretty safe since I’ve backed it up in a number of places, but it feels less real.
So I picked up a cheap half-frame camera kind of impulsively.
I enjoyed shooting it on my vacation so much I got a used Canon Rebel G off eBay and I’ve taken some photos with that too. It’s been about six weeks of me enjoying this process.
And I have not seen a single photograph yet. It’s a lot harder to get film developed nowadays, it turns out, all the one-hour shops that were still around in my adolescence are gone. It costs a fortune to use a local camera shop ($46 to develop and print a roll of half-frame at mine, apparently!), which isn’t fast either, and the only alternative is to mail it in. My film has been in transit a week, it hasn’t gotten to a laboratory yet. It took ages to even put them in the mail because my Ektar was lost for a while, too. That’s another problem the cloud solves, I have to admit.
I’m surprisingly anxious. Did I fuck up putting the film in the camera, or taking it out? Did I choose the right film? Is my finger in every shot? Do my cameras even work? All questions that remain to be seen.
Obviously this can’t replace my phone for kid pictures. But I hope they come out charming enough to make the process worth it!
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