I mentioned earlier that I was still interested in trying film again. Well, I’m currently visiting my parents, so I asked my Dad if I could borrow his Minolta X-700 MPS (what does that MPS stand for?) and run a few rolls of film through it. He agreed, so I bought a 3-pack of Kodak BW400CN film and took it to the wedding we were attending as well as other family get-togethers.
My Dad hasn’t used his X-700 in about five years, but everything is in good working order and the camera itself has pretty good quality (X-700s still goes for a couple hundred on the used market). When I first held it, it felt very non-ergonomic and awkward compared to my 20D, but once I actually started to use it, everything fell into place and it was very gratifying to shoot with.
My Dad’s camera has a Gemini 28-80mm f/3.5-4.8 on it, which I haven’t researched yet, but is probably a middle of the road zoom lens. The lens does not support all of the X-700’s features (including the P mode) but it seems like a pretty nice lens. The push-pull zoom was a bit stiff though, and sometimes gave me a little bit of trouble.
At this point, I’ve shot two rolls with the camera/lens combination, developed one, and feel like I can make a reasonable assessment. Not as much about the camera, since I do not have a lot of experience with film (it has been at least a decade since I last shot on film), but I feel I can speak to the process of using a decent manual focus camera.
The best way to summarize the experience is to say that I enjoyed using the camera. As great as digital is, there is something about that solid tactile feeling of releasing the shutter, winding the film, and operating a manual focus lens that a fully automatic digital SLRs rob you of. In fact, it was even fun to load and unload the film (although I could definitely see how reloading could be annoying in the long run). In particular, the film advance on the X-700 has a positive, tactile feel and I had great fun using it — at first, I forgot to advance sometimes, but half-way through the first roll I was doing it automatically without thinking about it. The exposure meter on the X-700 is also surprisingly useful and easy to use once I figured it out, especially the AEL (auto exposure lock) switch. It helps that the main automatic mode is aperture priority mode, which is the most-used mode on my 20D.
Of course, not everything was good. Manual focus is a pain in changing environments, and since I was mostly shooting vacation photos (read: kids), I found it hard to get the focus where I wanted it in time to wait for a good expression. The viewfinder has a split prism, which I found really useful for getting great focus, but your eye has to be aligned well to use it and you also need a vertical (or horizontal) line to focus on. The end result was a much slower speed of shooting since I had to spend more time lining up the shots, focusing, and conserving film. Granted, I tend to take my time lining up shots anyway (to a fault, sometimes) but I slowed way down with the X-700 and missed a number of shots because I was not ready for them.
Overall, adjusting between the cameras (I had both the 20D and X-700 in use at times) caused a little confusion, but not as much as I would have expected. Other than trying to chimp the X-700 and wind the 20D, that is!
What really highlighted how far consumer photography has moved in the last ten or twenty years was developing that first roll of film.
I chose Kodak BW400CN simply because it was the only black and white film Walmart sold. And I wanted to go with black and white this time around since I’ve been itching to shoot B&W for a while. Sadly, the choice of black and white films is limited. Very limited. In fact, I purchased at Walmart because the local grocery store, Wegmans, only had a few types of film (all Kodak, only 200 and 400 color). Walmart had slightly more choice, but there was a heck of a lot more display space allotted to the memory cards than the film! And the reason BW400CN is the only one Walmart stocks? Because it is a B & W film that can be developed using the color process. Meaning the places that only do simple photo development (like Walmart) can develop it with the same process they use on color film.
So, I developed the film at Walmart too, using their 1-hour processing. The first surprise was that it cost $7.25 for single prints! (although, according to my Dad, it was that expensive in the old days, too). And, as my Dad pointed out, it is a hybrid film/digital process because the negatives are developed chemically, then scanned, then printed on the digital printers they use for direct digital printing. I have to search around a bit, but I believe a full chemical processing from negative to print would be pretty expensive and hard to find nowadays.
The end result was that that processing did not seem very authentic to me. My 4×6 prints have a little bit of grain to them, but I can’t tell if it is the grain of the film or digital noise. If I shoot on film, I’d rather have the process be chemical the whole way. On the flip side though, Walmart gives you the option to get your images on a CD for an extra $2.50, an option that I did not take but probably should have, since I do not have a film scanner.
The results, though, were very pleasing. I’ll probably share some images on my personal blog once I get back home, but I can make some qualitative statements.
Film, since it is a chemical process and non-linear, tends to be a little more forgiving on the high and low side of exposure. Put another way, it has a higher dynamic range than digital (although digital enthusiasts would argue that digital is catching up quickly). Yet film also has a certain look to it that is hard to replicate on a computer. The images from my first roll really impressed me. Sure, I had a few stinkers, but not as many as I expected and some of them were quite beautiful. It is hard to say exactly why, but the film seemed to handle highlights, reflection off water, etc. in a much nicer way.
The Kodak BW400CN film, because it is black and white film using the color process, actually does have a bit of a color cast to it. Specifically, I noticed that lighter areas of the prints tended to be a bit warmer (slightly reddish) while the darker areas were a bit cooler (slightly blue-greenish). In some cases, that color cast helped the image, but in some cases the colors detracted. I really don’t understand why Walmart doesn’t do a grayscale conversion after scanning — or maybe they do, but forgot to do it on my prints.
Either way, this experience solidifies my desire to buy a film camera. I’m leaning towards a medium format camera, probably a low end TLR or something similar, since I’m curious to try the form factor and I think it’d be fun to play with. I originally was ok with not having a meter built-in, but I may be rethinking that aspect now. The meter on the X-700 was pretty darn useful when it came down to it. I’d also like to get a low-end EOS film camera to let me shoot 35mm film with my EF lenses.
Either way, I’ll keep you posted!
