Snap Happy
When I stopped working full time in early 2019, I made up a list of things to do. Many were mundane to do with clearing and shredding files and sorting out odds and ends around the house; some were more prosaic. One of them that I haven’t yet done is to return to processing my own black and white film, something I haven’t done since the 1980s. These days, processing and scanning is a lot easier than setting up a dark room (for which we have no space anyway.) My thoughts are turning back to that idea.
Regular readers will know of my fondness for film and film cameras, even though, like everyone else, I like the convenience of my phone camera and digital cameras for the immediacy of results and ease of image manipulation. Even so, like everyone of my age, film is where I started and the photographers I most like were all from the film age. It’s akin to my general liking for analogue things. Some of my happiest moments with a camera were with my old Canon AT-1 and Kodachrome 64. I still have that camera and quite a few others (one of the other things on that list that I haven’t done is to thin down the camera herd …)
One of the great things about that old Canon is that it had no automatic functions at all except a built in light meter. That meant that I had to learn by trial and error how film, aperture and shutter speed interact, allong with hyperfocal distances and depth of field and all that stuff. That has always stood me in good stead, even when I bought a used Canon A1 in 1988 with all its automated options. And my preference with the several cameras I have is to always have the manual setting option to hand, even if I often use aperture priority modes.
Modern cameras and the ready availability of filters to do anything make things too easy in most respects. It is, as Admiral Akbar said, a trap, and I fall into it all the time. More often than not I’m happy to fall into it – get a nice image, manipulate it if necessary, and stick it on social media or on this blog and Bob’s your uncle.
Now, it’s the photographer that takes the photo, not the equipment, and fetishisation of equipment is something that is a commonplace now. But there’s also a synergy between the equipment and the user, the feel of something that fits in your hands, that becomes, at its best, an extension of your mind and imagination. Like guitarists and instruments, you are always looking for the one, even though you know you’ll never find it.
But. Sometimes you have to challenge yourself and get out of the comfort zone, and I have a mind to get hold of one of the early Leicas – a iiif or similar if I can get one cheap. These cameras have no frills at all. You focus and compose and figure out exposure with a meter or using the sunny-16 rule, and hope that the camera and lens become part of you and you can concentrate on finding and making images.
Unfortunately, even though they are a tenth of the price of some of the Leica M series, the old Barnack Leicas still tend to be sold out of Japan to collectors at slightly inflated prices (especially once you factor in tax and duty and postage), so it is really a question of keeping eyes open and hoping for some luck. Happily, though, the early Leica designs were so influential and popular that there were a lot of copies made. Some of the copies cost as much as the originals, however there were a lot of Soviet copies that *can* be found cheap, and I’m going to have a crack with a couple of those.
What with the pandemic hitting production and supply, colour film is currently very expensive and I’m not inclined to waste what I have in the cupboard or buy anything new for experimenting, and hence it makes sense to think about using B&W and processing it myself.
Watch this space.
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