I worked in a local photo lab for over nine years. I got into to photography using a Rebel G film camera and worked my way up. I also had a Mamiya 1000s 645 camera with a 80mm lens and a cable release. I know what you mean about all the above. I had dealings with Nikon’s F3’s and FM2 camera. I also had dealings with an old Canon AE1 without the motor drive.

I always appreciated the smell of fresh film. I really enjoyed the freshness of 120 and 220 Kodak film. You can always tell how well film is by the smell. Many people thought I was nuts when talking about it, but the lab owner told me different. Makes me wish I still had a film camera laying around. Maybe I will just buy some fresh film and store it for old times sake…in the freezer. LOL

By Scott on Apr 8, 2008

I miss being able to put yourself in crazy situations, like using TechPan to shoot skateboarding, and seeing what you could pull off. I miss going to the place in Houston that sold all the out of date film super cheap and picking up stuff you would never normally shot just cause it was $ per roll.

I love shooting digital but every once in a while I get a little pain in my heart for film. Then I remember what a PITA is was most of the time.

By Zingshots on Apr 8, 2008

Absolutely. The smell of film coming out of the canister was awesome (I miss the canisters too, keep all your little bits in them). I still use my Gossen UltraPro meter along with a home-made “exposure disc” for my digital work and I still sneak down and wind the film-advance lever on my F-100 Nikon just to feel it’s sublime-silkiness.
Yeah, I play with my shutter-release cables, but never owned one I thought was smooth enough.
Now as for the smell of the Lab, there’s one thing I don’t miss, although a lot of people do…
Good blog, you caught a lot of the highlights of old-skool.

By Jimmy D on Apr 8, 2008

I’m new here (thanks Strobist!) and I really like your site.

My father passed away a few years ago and I finally got around to asking my mom for his cameras. Now I’m shooting film again
with a Leica M2 but mostly his M3. It’s pretty satisfying on a lot of different levels. But, darn, film and processing sure are getting expensive (spoiled by digital I guess).

By wilksonian on Apr 8, 2008

Man o man, those cable releases! They cost like 5 bucks vs. the 30 or so a cable release goes for the digicams these days.

Most of all, I miss breathing all those lovely chemicals for hours in darkrooms while listening to the radio.

By Wes on Apr 8, 2008

thanks for the tips… I am young but old-fashioned. The things I miss the most are:
1. battery life… what happened to $10 battery lasting 1 year? Now if I travel to the mountains of Nepal, I am controlled by battery life.
2. thinking about the process… instead of just uploading to the computer and then thinking processing… I find I shoot more and think less now.
3. cost and longevity of camera life… i’m already out-dated, and I just bought this thing 6 months ago.
Having said that, digital sure is amazing.

By Tyler on Apr 8, 2008

Hi Jim. Great site, I’m another that found you by way of Strobist… I started out with film, the family’s Brownie Hawkeye back when I was just a kid in the 60’s. I, too, connect smells with shooting film. Nothing like that fresh roll smell, or the smell of developing chemicals… I’ve been shooting digital for over five years now and the funny thing is that all that film I always wanted, but couldn’t afford, is now available on ebay… I own more film cameras now than I ever have and have even come back to developing my own b/w…

By Todd on Apr 13, 2008

It’s so funny that you mentioned the smell of film as just this weekend I was opening a few rolls of film (tri-x) getting ready to do some shooting and I caught myself sniffing the new rolls and thinking about how that was one of the joys of shooting film….

One of the things I hate about film is negative curl… just processed a roll of rollei retro 400 and the edge to edge curls is so huge I’m not sure I’m going to be able to scan it… any pointers?

By Arne on Apr 14, 2008

I still shoot a lot of film for fun stuff, but digital has the chimp factor and there is never that hesitation while you think “Am I about to waste another frame with this shot?” which every now and again makes me miss a moment.

Buttttt, I love that I’ve got a full frame camera and a fast prime lens for 1/20th of the cost of a digital setup, I love that I can use Fuji Velvia, which knocks any Canon or Nikon sensor out of the park, I love the fact that my completly mechanical camera has little clockwork gears that you can hear whirring on a long exposure, I love that my camera is half the size of a DSLR and made from metal not plastic, I love that people think “Oh thats cute” when I show them my rangefinder with b&w film loaded, rather than the reaction you get to a pro-looking DSLR which is “I don’t have my makeup on, panic and look stressed!”

Jeeze, I could go on for hours…

By Marcus on Apr 15, 2008

I started photographing with my grandpas old Leica when I was a child in the 80’s. Got a point-and-shoot Canon when I was nine and decided to use my fathers Kodak from 1965, when I was 16. At 18 I bought a EOS 300.
I never stopped using the Kodak, as its 50mm lens gives you extraordinary images.
After finding out about the increase of possibilities a self-operated darkroom holds, I did almost only B/W for some years until I moved into a new flat, where the bathroom couldn’t easily be refashioned to be a dark room. This is where I nearly stopped taking photos.
When I bought this Olympus point-and-shoot digital camera last year, I rediscovered how much fun photography is, even with the limited possibilities of a point-and-shoot. A few months ago I accidentally got a Canon A-1 with a set of fine lenses (so many people going digital, so little space …), so I also started experimenting with this fine piece. Working analogical is sometimes annoying, but some of the results and some of the experiences are simply unmatched.
Nevertheless: in a few days my new EOS 400D will be arriving and I’m really looking forward to that!
The inhibition treshold is simply lower with a dslr, as the effort to get a grip on the results is just so much lower and I just have no time to spend in a darkroom.

By foo on Apr 21, 2008

I just got back into photography after about fifteen years of nothing more than point and shoot cameras. It is funny the things I miss. I do miss the manual winding of the film. And I miss the filters as well, especially ones used for white balance.

But what I miss the most is something that they never should have taken away. I miss the split focus screen that gave you the ability to quickly (relatively speaking) and accurately focus manually. I know that auto focus is fast and usually very reliable, but sometimes I want to manual focus and it is nearly impossible with many of todays DSLRs. I know you can buy those screens after market, but I don’t have one yet on my camera and I miss it.

By Cliff on Apr 24, 2008

I miss putting a lupe to the ground glass on a view camera and using the now seemingly useless ability to tilt and swing my way to detail impossibilities on a sheet of film.
I miss loading 4×5 film. Transparency to be specific. I miss flipping dark slides, mixing chemicals and burning in with only my hands.
The sound of gently running water and dark amber light with the mixed scent of sulfur and acetic acid.
I miss being an expert at making a perfect chrome.
I miss the people who know what a chrome was.
Cable release; Yes. I still have it. Cost a small fortune for what it was and it was worth it.
I still have my first view camera too.
I would never go back and away from the miracle that I work with every day now. The list of things I miss is actually short considering the amount of change in this industry and the amount of time I have been in it. I do wish that there was some use for all of the processing information that I still possess. Feeling old as I write this….

By Ed Zabel on Apr 25, 2008

I’m a sixteen year old and am taking a photo class at the local college, and boy am I happy. There’s no lab fee and the class was only $20. We’re shooting B&W film with old-school film SLR’s, mine’s a panel readout but the majority of the students are using the older models. I have one but it doesn’t have any batteries.
I honestly can say taht the smells are AWESOME.
I don’t know but it just has such an appeal about it.

I love how shooting film forces you to think about what you are going to shoot because of the cost as opposed to shooting digital where you can snap photos without worrying about losing frames.
I don’t like having to wait til the next day to see my photos, but it does make me anticipate it and the longer I wait, the more excited I am once I see the contact sheets and enlargements. The contact sheets themselves are pieces of art themselves!

I love the complete control you have of how the composition turns out and how you have to think about everything about it like shutter speed, aperture, etc. you have to be exact.
But even so, when you enlarge it, you have the possibility of making it come out well.

I don’t know I love how digital can be digitally enhanced and edited, but film requires much more skill and technique. Anyone can edit and make their photos look better if they’re digital, but film requires you to get it right the first time.

I still gotta say, my canon 40D > canon elan IIe, but in the end, I love them both.

Canon is the best! yay
Although…the Nikon D300 DOES make me salivate uncontrollably…

- Alvin Kim

By Alvin Kim on Jun 28, 2008