Lyon on film
Travel with camera equipment can be a bit of a challenge if you want to travel light. This trip to Lyon was only brief so I decided to reduce the weight of my hand luggage and have a bit of fun with one of my old film cameras and a couple of rolls of expired film. (For the photography geeks like me out there, it was a Pentax MX. Scroll to the end for a pic of the camera) Compared to travelling with a pro dslr camera and lenses the difference was significant. Quite liberating.
It was a little strange at first getting back into the groove of film. There's no checking the back to see if the image looks OK. A lot more intuition and drawing on experience to know what settings are going to work. And more careful consideration of the framing. You can't take several shots and decide later, unless you have lots of rolls of film and are prepared for the extra developing costs.
I fell back into it quite naturally, finding I took more time and the shots were more considered. And when I spotted something that needed quick reactions with little time to change the settings, it still seemed pretty easy.
The thing I loved most when I first started to shoot digital was being able to see the images straight away, so it was good to discover that I didn't have to wait too long to see my results. I took the films to a local photo shop and the digital scans of the images were in my inbox pretty much as I got back home. Modern convenience combined with a traditional process.
There definitely is a special quality to film images that can't properly be replicated digitally. And I was relieved to see that the images looked pretty much as I'd imagined them while shooting. My setting choices were good in most cases. Phew, I do know what I'm doing...
