Film Adventures: SLR vs DSLR Problems

So the time has finally come for me to say bye bye to my amateur days and step into the big leagues, which has led me to sell both of my DSLR cameras a couple weeks ago. So what now you may be asking yourself or so what others reading this might be thinking. Well the bold move was carefully decided sometime last year when I realized a level of progression in my work as of late and the need of more megapixels. So I mustered up some balls, put my rigs ups for sale and patiently waited for the bait. Once they were gone though I missed them like no other. I quickly found myself doing dumb shit like watching Tv and trolling Snapchat and this went on up until about a week ago when I realized that I had one more camera left.

I proceeded to dust of my 3rd stringer and got her back in the game. Armed with my 1979 Konica Auto Reflex TC with 40mm 1.4 Glass attached and some Fujifilm 400speed film, I took to the ironically sunny streets of Seattle in search of potential locations for future shoots. One of the big differences or inconveniences of switching from digital to film was not having that heads up display of your settings when looking into the view finder. My first few shots of the day was quickly judged, using my basic knowledge of exposure, and I fired away. This wasn't a problem until I rolled up on to the next location that i'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to be at and just giddily started shooting without checking my settings! Now we all know Film is unforgiving so having my camera settings as follows, 1/250 f/4 ASA(ISO) 800 on a sunny ass day is a huge mistake and results in an extra overexposed image!!! (example below)

Once I realized this I slapped myself of course and corrected things! How the camera got on and ISO of 800, is still a mystery to me. When I want the photos to feature a bit of grain or noise, I usually bump the ISO up to 400 but not unless in a low light situation do you want to shoot at ISO 800. After correcting my mistakes I properly changed the settings using basic exposure knowledge and reshot the angles I messed up minutes before. The most rewarding thing about film is virtually not knowing what your going to get so because I know the basics about exposure, I was able to realize that the photos were messed up by rechecking my settings and correct a few things before I even got the film developed. I definitely gained a new habit playing around with the camera for the first day and it was cool to see that my knowledge of cameras from the digital side of photography helps me on the film side. I'm now looking to see if this make me a better photographer going back to digital and I'm sure it will. Film forces you to think about everything before pressing that shutter release. 

We'll see if I learned anything in the next installment of my Film Adventure. Until then get out there and fine tune your craft guys whether it be photography or knitting or whatever! Take some pride in it and learn the ins and outs. The results from learning new things can sometimes be more exciting than pleasure itself when you get it down pat. Good night guys! Signing out!