The last time I shot 120mm film was about a year ago. The last time I shot 35mm was last April. Never meant to neglect shooting film but somehow time just flew by. Why would anyone bother shooting obsolete film cameras in the current digital era? Simple: film looks great, its a butt load of fun and can be an incredibly liberating experience. When you're on the road you dont have to worry about batteries, charger, hard drives, cables, etc. etc. I am certainly not an expert when it comes to shooting film, but I love seeing the grains and the natural flaws in my developed film. But dont get me wrong it costs a lot of money these days to get film processed. Scanning is a pain in the ass. And forget about instant gratification ...but this could be a positive thing depending on each individuals perspective. I dont generally have my film developed until after months I take the shots, which means that I'm able to emotionally detach myself from the photos and judge them more objectively.

I love that I have an option to challenge myself with different types of film. Each is so unpredictable and unique in their own. Over a course of about a year I had tried various types of film: fresh, expired, positive, negative and didn't come across one that I didnt like. Nonetheless I have begun to really like positive (slide) film. I have always been a bit apprehensive because slide film has no tolerance for error as regular negative film. Since the only light meter I have is the Pocket Light Meter app thats available on my iPhone, theres no way of telling whether its accurate except for trial and error.

So I shot these frames back in June with a roll of Fuji RDPIII and a roll of Kodak 160VC. I pretty much shot everything with both slide and negative just to be on the safe side thinking that the negatives would turn out better than the positives. Anyway I was pleasantly surprised and esctatic when the results came back. I looked at my photos on the slides and just gasped in awe. It was something wonderful and unexpected. Shots that were blurry or out of focus that would have looked horrible in digital looked more like beautiful mistakes in film. I learned that when shooting negative you expose for the shadows. But when shooting positive film you expose for the highlights. And the Pocket Light Meter app is just unbelievably accurate!

Lotus on Kodak 160VC