For the Fun of Film

Zaakary Barnes
Nov 29
8 min read

Updated: Dec 2

A bit over a year ago, I bought my first film camera. Let me tell you what all I have learned.

Film is expensive. The end. Thank you for reading and be sure to check back for my next update!

Just kidding.

*Storm Clearing in Wyoming - Fujicolor 200*

I have gone back and forth, up and down, side to side and every other which way with this blog post. After initially deciding I wanted to write about my foray into film photography, I then realized I didn’t know why – other than I just wanted to.

Why write about film? Why shoot it? Why invest in an entirely new system, be bad with it, learn and grow, then realize how much you don’t know, and then just keep on going? Why do any of it? Most importantly, why did I want to write about it?

For me, just doing it “because” was not quite it. And even though this is my website, thank you, I still think it is appropriate to have a well-thought and well-articulated rationale for writing about the things I do.

*Bear Lake Corridor on Film - Kodak Portra 400*

Ever since my last blog post I wrote back in… oh God… I have had this idea on my mind, but I have been unable to articulate it.

I have been living my life, going on adventures, taking both digital and film photographs, collecting records and CDs with this vague notion rattling around my brain. And wouldn’t you know it, but it was those dang records and CDs that actually helped me figure this out.

For the record (ha), all but one of the photos in this post are film. I’ll try to label them as best as I can, but my notetaking in the early days was, shall we say, inconsistent.

I only mention it because this article is going to be a bit different from my prior posts. Instead of recounting a journey or adventure, I want to convey a thought process, a feeling. And I hope these photos lend themselves to that effort.

*Black Canyon of the Gunnison - Kodak Gold 200*

A few months ago, an album I liked was taken off Apple Music. A dispute between the publisher and Apple led to the album’s removal from streaming services. I had never purchased the album outright, which meant I could no longer download it for offline listening.

That might not sound like a big deal but having access to good music when I am out of cell service range matters a lot to me.

Even more recently (and perhaps stereotypically), I wanted to listen to Riverdance. The thing is, both Apple Music and Spotify only have the 25^th Anniversary edition, not the original.

Let me tell you, the anniversary edition is not the same and is certainly not what I grew up listening to. One of my favorite songs, Reel Around the Sun, is conspicuously missing 2:23 from the original version, which clocks in at 8:42.

My mom ultimately sent the CD to solve this problem (thanks mom!). I ripped the CD to my computer, added it to my library, and now I can listen to my music.

*Bison Near Grand Tetons - Fujicolor 200*

At this point, I’m sure you’re thinking, “This blog post is noticeably lacking any commentary on photography!” And if you aren’t, sorry for pointing it out. Thank you for your patience, regardless.

One of the two big points for me about film really boils down to ownership of art and preservation of media. My streaming experiences form a decent, albeit low-stakes, example of a slowly growing concern: owning nothing and paying for access.

Years ago, when I bought a video game on a disc, I owned it. I could play it when I wanted to, and I could even lend it to friends. The same went for movies on VHS, DVD or Blu-ray, music on CDs or records – hell, even tapes – and basically any other form of media available.

*Blue Hour Reflections - Kodak Portra 400*

The digital economy changed all that. Instead of paying for things once and owning copies of them, I now pay for a digital license that grants me access to all the things I want, and even some I don’t. And I pay for that license over, and over, and over, and over…

I don’t like that. So, over the past eighteen months, I have been looking for ways to enjoy more physical media.

Enter: film.

One of the things that immediately struck me about film was its "tangibility." Light entering the camera reacts with silver oxide crystals coating the plastic, creating the image. It is a chemical reaction, a physical process on a physical strip.

Even setting the camera up is a tangible (and fun!) process. The film must be loaded into the back of the body, wound through take-up sprocket, and the viewfinder mounted to the top of the rangefinder. Changing the settings for the film or shutter speed involves turning hefty dials and knobs, and advancing the film for each shot requires pulling a lever with a satisfying heft.

It is a mechanical process, through and through.

*Dawn on the California Zephyr - Kodak Portra 800*

My interest in physical media roughly coincided with the rise of another cultural flashpoint: "Artificial Intelligence."

In November 2022, the world was introduced to Chat GPT. Although artificial “intelligence” had been in development for some time, this is the one that lit the spark for the modern gold rush/fool’s errand that is the AI boom.

For those unaware, the GPT stands for “generative pre-trained transformer” and describes the process by which the model works. A set of data is given to the model to recognize patterns and associate those patterns with various questions, prompts, or suggestions. The model is “pre-trained” on data (the process used is called a “transformer” and is beyond the scope of this post) and it “generates” a response.

I’ll be coming back to the training data later.

At its core, this concept is... fine. It is truly an impressive technical feat that we have built a machine which can analyze and reproduce our methods of self-expression. But it has limitations. It cannot – as of current writing – understand, empathize, imagine, or create. It can just generate.

It didn’t generate this photo, though.

This principle of generative AI inevitably became commonplace in photographic and videographic media online. Hilarious experiments became impressive tech demos. Boring images became video slop. I’m sure you’ve seen it – and if you haven’t, I have some existentially bad news for you.

We live in a world where every single image now requires a second glance, a closer look, a critical thought. Spaghetti fingers, dead eyes, and matte skin are no longer the glaring tells they once were. Shiny new AI models can produce realistic scenes – now with audio! – at the whim of a prompt.

These improved models are the fruits of trees planted in poisoned ground. Troves of original text, images, and video were used as training data without the consent – or even knowledge – of their authors. Output from these pattern-based machines was then presented as “original work,” as the next creative step. No citation or credit given, of course.

In school we learned about falsely presenting ideas or analysis as our own. I wish we had a word for that.

Over the past two years, my internet experience became more artificial and less intelligent. Computers regurgitated stale ideas and controversial content designed to drive clicks and advertising revenue.

I came to view film photography as a rejection of that paradigm. Moments in time quite literally burned into the film they were captured on, posted on a blog I control. My photos became something more than a collection of electrons in a file, they were real in a sense.

But this new reality came at a cost. I joked about it earlier, but the financial aspect of shooting film quickly made an impact on my wallet. Every single part of the process came with an increase in price.

Every step – getting film, sending it for development, developing the film itself, scanning the images, and returning the negatives – all came with their own discrete cost.

The price point of film immediately impacted my shooting style. I became acutely aware of each shutter click, each wind of the lever. I began asking myself, “Is this moment worth it?” So far, the answer has nearly always been “absolutely.”

When shooting 35mm film, I now use a Voigtlander Bessa-T rangefinder paired with a 21mm lens and viewfinder. I will be completely honest with you: if I had known what I was doing when I got this, I probably would have started with something else.

Taking a single photo with this thing is a fairly involved – but fun! - process. I must first roughly compose my shot using the viewfinder on top. Then I use the two holes above the lens to focus the image correctly. Then I go back to the viewfinder to make sure everything is still framed, this time with an eye on three lights that indicate the exposure level. After making final adjustments to aperture or shutter speed to dial in the exposure, I can then finally take the shot.

This is the only digital photo in this post, but it gives you a sense of all the components involved in the whole process.

There’s a lot going on there. A lot to mess up, certainly, but also a lot to have fun with.

I think the hardest part in all of this is not knowing how the shot looks immediately after taking it. How am I supposed to know what to change, what to adjust? Would a shallower depth of field look better? Are my shadows underexposed? Are they overexposed?

The only way to know is to wait. Wait to finish the roll, wait for the mail to get it to the lab, and wait for it to be developed and scanned.

Eventually, though, the images come back and sometimes – once in a while – the shots actually turn out pretty well! A lot of the time, especially early on, they came back looking like this:

I don’t typically share my worse photos, but I felt like it was important to the overall point of this post to demonstrate that not every one of my shots is a banger (or whatever is cool to say now). As a matter of fact, most of my earlier shots were far from stellar. But each shot was a chance to learn.

For me, the learning is the fun part. And developing a skill or a shot is its own reward.

Thanks for sticking with me through this real odyssey of a blog post. Take a break, you earned it! I would say I am also taking a break, but I already have another post in the works about the effort various space photos require.

If you’d like to support my blog and get some super cool and exclusive prints in the meantime, please consider joining my Postcard Club! Members get two postcards per year featuring an exclusive film photo that will never be sold elsewhere, plus a handwritten note from yours truly.

I also have select prints for sale on my blog or a wider selection available on Picfair. But in today’s world where attention and time are commodities to be monetized, your support simply by taking the time to read this means the world to me.

As always, fly safe and I’ll see you in the next one!

-Zaak

P.S. If you made it this far, keep an eye out on social media! I'll be doing another custom (and free) birthday postcard, so be sure to sign up! I'll update this post on December 1 with the link here at the bottom.

UPDATE: Click here!

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