Lately I’ve been messing around with a Canon A-1 film camera that I picked up at Dexter’s in Ventura. I walked in their shop one day and said I wanted to monkey around with a film camera, and the owner hooked me up with a bunch of lenses and the A-1! My understanding is that the A-1 was the first camera to have a “program” mode, practically speaking, you can turn the aperture dial to the green A and the shutter speed dial to the green P and the camera computer will choose the aperture/shutter speed for you based on the light meter. So far the camera computer takes better photos than me pretty much every time.
It’s so much fun to muddle through that phase of learning a new skill, when you don’t have any burdensom expectations of “performance” or “the proper way of doing things.” Just try. and learn as you go along. Then, over time, you can learn to compare your work to that of everyone else, and find that everyone else is much better at the thing than you are. Like some perfectly processed DIGITAL SUPER MEGA BYTES “image” of the Horsetail Falls firefalls in Yosemite, every camera aficionado lined up at the gates to get it JUST PERFECT. Get that file uploaded to the CLOUD and EDIT ALL THE FEELINGS OUT OF IT. The imperfection of film does suit my “elitist” attitude, not that I can’t appreciate those polished images worthy of the Windows login screen, I favor “simple” shots that seem like they were taken on a whim, which the below certainly were, just a brief moment you can tell I went, ayaaa! I want to remember this!
