I, like the majority of (non insane) commercial photographers shoot digital.  I still however have a love of film, especially black and white.  A couple of years ago my mum gave me an old camera she found in a drawer, an Olympus Trip 35.  This promptly disappeared into one of my cupboards until about 6 months ago when I found it and decided to run a couple of films through it.  Its an amazing little camera.  The only problem is it has ‘focus zones’ so you have to estimate the distance to your subject and then set the lens to that zone, e.g. 2 – 3 meters.  It turns out my judge of distance is pretty rubbish and as such most of my shots were out of focus.  More recently I picked up an Olympus 35 RC for around £40 on Ebay.  Its essentially the same camera but it has a range finder spot so you can focus properly.

The absolute joy of film is that you do not know what you have until it has been sent off to the lab to be developed.  Also, with these old cameras being so unpredictable you get unexpected exposures and as previously mentioned, out of focus shots.  There is also something precious about only having 24/36 exposures, I think of my parents taking this camera on holidays and shooting maybe two rolls of film.  What they got was their memories of the holiday, badly exposed, out of focus, they all went into the album as it was all they had.

I’m rambling now.  Below are  few shots from both of the above cameras.  Mostly of family and from day trips, but you get the idea.  If you are interested in photography, dont go in for those fashionable and expensive Lomo’s, get yourself down the boot fair and pick up anything you can find for a few pounds and run some film through.  If anyone wants tips on where to get film and where to process cheaply feel free to drop me a mail.