As a home tech site, we're hardly ones to suggest that you shun new technology. But after a little reminiscing lately, we've been thinking about taking a step back in time and picking up our old 35mm camera again. We're not going for vintage shots or feeling nostalgic. We just know that old school film cameras will always have the edge on one thing: Creating memories instead of capturing them.
When we ventured into the web to upgrade the 2GB storage in our point-and-shoot, we couldn't have guessed we'd be considering a memory card that was 32x the size. Despite the visions that danced through our heads of taking thousands of pictures without unloading, we decided not to upgrade.
It wasn't the $350 price tag—OK, maybe it had a little to do with the price tag. But we also thought about what it would mean to have a ton of camera storage. About going through an entire week-long vacation without putting the camera down. Some photogs might call this heaven. We were thinking about the other place.
We began to remember fondly what our lives were like back when we lugged around a 35mm camera. After you've snapped the best 36 shots, you were forced to put your camera down. You stopped capturing memories and began to help create them.
And when you got home, you didn't have to re-size, rotate and remove the red eye from 1,279 vacation photos.
So with a little bit of nostalgic thought, we made the (now easy) decision to skip on the huge memory card. We're going to stick with our modest storage and try to live life like we've got 36 exposures.
(Image: Flickr user Troy Holden under license from Creative Commons.)
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Comments (4)
I discovered the hard way that you can't always purchase a larger memory card for older digital cameras. Sometimes the camera just has limits to what size cards it can read.
I wanted to add that this subject just came up for me last week as well. I was showing a friend a photo album of a trip to Australia since he was planning to go this fall. All the pictures were taken with my old Minolta Vectis APS camera. I enjoyed looking through them and remembered how fun it was to choose the different photo formats before taking the pictures. I considered going and getting some APS film briefly after reminiscing about it a bit. Then I remembered my subsequent frustration not having the ability to easily reproduce the images or email them or edit them. I did have photo disks made when I had all the film developed but the quality just isn't as good. Someday I would like to take all my APS cartridges in someplace to have high quality scans made but that just costs too much money at the moment. I have three overseas vacations I'd like to "redo" just because I only have film images.
While part of me wants to pick up an old rangefinder, I just don't want to deal with film.
I did the next best thing and purchased an old lens for my 5D2. I went with a manual focus Mamiya 80 f1.9. After adapters and everything was purchased I was looking at around $500. The effects it gives are much different than that of a newer digital lens. In addition, the manual focus and manual aperture ring make you take the time to think about the shot, compose the framing, and overall slow you down.
I've found that this is almost like film because you go a little bit slower and really think about what you're doing.
Cheers,
M
I shoot both DSLR and a film point-and-shoot, and they complement each other very well. In my opinion it`s not about the equipment, but in one`s ability to maintain balance between making memories and capturing them, between watching and taking pictures. I usually go out with an empty 4 gig card in my "Kropfaktor" and a fresh roll of film in my Agfa Sensor or Petri Color 35, and usually come home with about 30-40 pics combined (tops) and a head full of beautiful sights and other interesting experiences.