Development

I recently acquired a used camera from the Most Awesome Person I Know. It's an older film camera that she, apparently, had no use for anymore. So she gave it to me.

Now, I myself have been using a digital camera for the last three years or so. I was one of those hold outs that just didn't want to give up using the manual film camera that I'd been using since I was a junior in high school. The Ricoh and I, we have history. It's the camera I bought when I started taking photography classes. With that camera I learned what f-stops and aperture were. Please don't ask me to explain those things now. That was 12 years ago, and it's not like I went pro.

But I always loved being photography guy in college. I worked on the yearbook for 4 out of the 5 years I spent in Bluefield. And in working on that yearbook, I got to use the school's awesome camera. Most of the pictures that made the final cut in the yearbooks were taken by me. I had that camera with me wherever I went. Sometimes I would even take my own camera, even thought it was a little more low-tech than the school's fancy Nikon.

As it stands, I haven't actually developed a roll of film in years. So having this new-to-me camera, I decided to dig through the box that contains my old camera to see if I had any unused film. Not only do I have an insane amount of unused film (why I stocked up, I don't know), but I had two rolls that were used but undeveloped. So I took a trip to Walgreen's to have them developed.

Since I made the switch to digital, it should go without saying that I haven't used the old Ricoh for about three years. So that made these two rolls of film at least that old. One of those rolls contained pictures of a wedding I attended four years ago. Another roll contained pictures of my cousin when she was about a year old. She's five now.

I'm not sure how often I'll use this new camera. I do have a lot of film to use, but it costs money to get it developed. If I had a darkroom and supplies, I could develop it myself, but even that costs money. With my digital camera, I take the pictures and then they're ready to be viewed. I don't have any photo albums, other than the ones on Facebook. So I kind of have to ask, what's the point of having all that film? Maybe I'll decide I like using the real camera again. I do think there is more of a connection with film. Maybe because it's something tangible.