Film Friday: What I Love about Shooting Film

by | Oct 13, 2023


I really wanted to bring back #filmfriday and today’s post is my attempt to do so. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to do it every Friday but I will give it a try. Part of the reason for its absence was I’ve finally been hit with the reality—what everybody had been yelling at me about— that shooting film is expensive and cranking out a weekly post about film photography turned out not to be practical for me, at least not at this time. But I’m going to give it a try anyway, so hang in there with me as I take a look at one of my favorite 35mm film cameras…


Today’s Post by Joe Farace

For all of the above reasons, I don’t get to shoot as much film as I would like to but I still own a bunch of film cameras, such as the beautifully crafted and no longer available Zeiss Ikon SW 35mm camera. You can still find’em on KEH, however.

I still enjoy shooing film: From time to time. I even like shooting with some of my Holga cameras too. They’re not Leicas but these days shooting film seems to be more about having fun. And that’s why we all got into photography in the first place, isn’t it? My friend Cliff Lawson was recently gifted a Holga 120N by his son, who is also a Holga shooter. Cliff and I are planning on doing a Holga Photo Walk together real soon now. Look for a post about that when it happens.

Yes, I enjoy making images using DSLRs and mirroless cameras but there are still a few things I really love about shooting film, such as:

Surprise. In a post entitled The Three Phases of Photographer’s Creative Life, I wrote about how the first phase occurs immediately after purchasinh that first “good” camera and you discover photography’s potential for fun and creativity. During this time, novice shooters are fearless and enthusiastically explore their world creating images that look so much better than they could have ever imagined. You still get that feeling when shooting film.

Travel. Back when I used to do more traveling, in addition to all the normal photo stuff I’d carry, I would also schlep a laptop computer with an external hard drive to store images. That’s just more gear to carry and I hate lugging this stuff though airports. Laptops are just one more hassle that I’d like to avoid and I’ve spent far too many nights on the road sorting and backing up images when I should have been outside soaking up local culture or making photographs.

Time. Digital imaging takes a lot of time. In the old days I’d drop off my exposed film at the lab and come back in a day or whatever and pick up slides or proof sheets. One of my labs, the former CL Custom, used to deliver finished prints and processed film to my home or studio! Nowadays we’re the lab and consequently spend more time learning and implementing new digital darkroom techniques. At a computer trade show several lifetimes ago, a guy told me, “I remember when I used to be creative, now I spend all my time learning new software.”

How I made this shot: You can read all about I made the above photograph of an Isetta microcar in a post on entitled Photographing Classic Cars with Film.

Would I trade all this and go back to shooting film exclusively? No. But there’s no reason I can’t just shoot film and have my film scanned to stay in the digital realm, at least as far as post-production goes.


If you would like to send me a roll of film to review or any other stuff that could be used for these posts and my videos, click the CONTACT tab and Ill send you the shipping address.