my first experience with film: Cody + Sabrina

Back in June my sister surprised me with a new camera—a Canon AE-1. Film has been something I’ve wanted to get into for a while now so when Danielle surprised me with this camera I was on a mission to find film ASAP. Finally I found theFINDlab, a company that sells and develops film, it was the perfect package. I ordered as much film as I could afford and already had a session with Cody and Sabrina coming up so I asked Sabrina if I could practice shooting some film during our session, she was onboard!

To say I was nervous would be an understatement, I brought Kodak TRI-X 400, a black and white film, somehow I thought that it would be harder to screw up black and white film. I’m glad I used it though, it was perfect for our session.

I loaded my film and wasn’t really sure what the heck I was doing, but I went with it. Set my exposure to what I thought was correct (didn’t even realize there was a meter in the camera to help me, but that’s okay I did somehow manage to expose everything correctly) and started clicking! On my digital camera I use the autofocus feature, it helps me keep up with clients and their memorable moments and the camera doesn’t miss focus quite often (but we all know that sometimes, it does, and that’s okay too), but this camera is all manual—so there was another adjustment. I missed focus a lot at this session, rookie move.

When all was said and done I was excited, nervous but excited, I thought it went well. I was ready to take my film out of the camera aaaaand I made another huge rookie mistake. I thought I wound the film back up in the canister but when I opened the camera I was wrong. Panic, I started panicking! I thought I ruined the whole roll, everything I worked so hard for and was so excited about. I ended up rolling it back into the canister and only ended up ruining a few, thank God.

Some of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken were on film during this session. I am so excited to add film as an option for clients!