#1736 – Vivitar 35EF / Self XXXXIIII
Worthing, 15th October 2016.
A lot of friends work a lot with film, rather than digital, cameras. It’s been at least ten years since I took photographs with a film camera, and I was interested to know whether I still could, and wanted to feel the impatience and excitement of having to wait for the film to be developed and sent back in the post.
The thing was, where to start? In the last few years I have bought a lot of old cameras to display, but I went out deliberately to find an old/vintage camera that worked. eBay came up trumps, and I soon found myself in possession of a Vivitar 35EF.
Produced in the early 1970s, it seemed as good a starting point as any.
Next up was the film. Should I go for colour or black and white? To be honest, this was a really easy choice, as I don’t think I have ever gone out to deliberately photograph in black and white (a lot of the digital images I take have tended to lend themselves to monochrome when I am processing them on the computer).
So, over a couple of months I took the Vivitar out with my normal Canon, slowly but steadily working through my 36 exposures. When they were finally used up, I sent them off and awaited the results…
When I received them, I was actually pleasantly surprised (as you can see in the image below!).
The images were generally sharper than I expected, the tones were really lovely, and really echoed those of photos taken then the camera would have been new.
Over the coming weeks, I am going to share these with you. I have photographed the prints, and the only amendments I have made is to resize them for the blog.
Enjoy!
ckponderings 
Hahaha! You were surprised even before developing the film. Great reflection of your hall in your glasses.
Film always surprises me, Koos. And thank you! It’s a lovely hall. 😉
Well done for embracing analogue again, Richard. That’s a cute little old number you picked up. You might think abour ordering your next completed film on a CD-ROM – means they can go straight on the laptop for processing 🙂
I like the idea of what-you-see-is-what-you-get photos from film. I got a real kick from not knowing what the images would look like.
It’s more a case of you forget what’s on there. Often a pleasant surprise of the sort we miss out on now. I’m concerned that photographing the prints may make take them further from the original – do the CD-ROM thing too if that’s offered 🙂
That makes sense, dag nabbit! 😉