Hello! I live up in the Prairies and am jazzed to have found this forum.
I'm in my early 40s and forums were a big part of my teenage hobby building. I used to shoot film 20-25 years ago, but had no clue what I was doing. I used my dad's Spotmatic SP with a dead light meter and just guessed. Looked nothing up, just bought whatever film with no understanding of speed appropriate to use. It was a wild time. I got a DSLR in the early 2010s but just never really clicked with it, and then I got a smart phone that ended up taking good enough photos, so photography as a hobby fell by the wayside for a decade or so.
I am in the process of scanning some of my negative archives to see how they fare compared to the lab prints I have and it's so funny checking out what film stocks I used. Of course a bunch don't exist anymore, and there are many many dud photos because of exposure. But there are also gems.
Getting back into a hobby when life is different can be fun. The challenges of full-time work and kids and TIME (the lack). However I find myself packing my camera into my backpack and wandering at lunch to shoot a few frames. Or I bring my camera on an outing with one of my kids and take some photos while he plays at the park.
I long for the candid family photography of my own childhood (shot on the exact same camera). Purposeful versus the inundation of pictures on my phone. I like the process of developing my own negatives even if I am not doing it perfectly. Although I would love to have a darkroom to print photos, that is definitely not in the cards at this stage of life so I have learned to use darktable and print my own photos. It's the least fun part as my job is also in front of a computer, but it's a necessary step for now.
My main format is 35mm, but I also have a medium format TLR that I am playing around with. The learning curve is steep for focusing, but it's a fun format and since I develop my own negatives, the stakes are low shooting 120. I have a few photography theory books to try and learn exposure and framing techniques, but as usual, time is the enemy and life is full. So it is slow.
I am looking forward to exploring around in here more and hopefully connecting with some folks who were super interested in film as a youth, and are jumping back into it.
Some of my favourite photographers are Peter Henry Emerson, Vivian Maier, Diane Arbus, Yousuf Karsh, Claude Cahun, Lee Miller-- to name a few
I'm in my early 40s and forums were a big part of my teenage hobby building. I used to shoot film 20-25 years ago, but had no clue what I was doing. I used my dad's Spotmatic SP with a dead light meter and just guessed. Looked nothing up, just bought whatever film with no understanding of speed appropriate to use. It was a wild time. I got a DSLR in the early 2010s but just never really clicked with it, and then I got a smart phone that ended up taking good enough photos, so photography as a hobby fell by the wayside for a decade or so.
I am in the process of scanning some of my negative archives to see how they fare compared to the lab prints I have and it's so funny checking out what film stocks I used. Of course a bunch don't exist anymore, and there are many many dud photos because of exposure. But there are also gems.
Getting back into a hobby when life is different can be fun. The challenges of full-time work and kids and TIME (the lack). However I find myself packing my camera into my backpack and wandering at lunch to shoot a few frames. Or I bring my camera on an outing with one of my kids and take some photos while he plays at the park.
I long for the candid family photography of my own childhood (shot on the exact same camera). Purposeful versus the inundation of pictures on my phone. I like the process of developing my own negatives even if I am not doing it perfectly. Although I would love to have a darkroom to print photos, that is definitely not in the cards at this stage of life so I have learned to use darktable and print my own photos. It's the least fun part as my job is also in front of a computer, but it's a necessary step for now.
My main format is 35mm, but I also have a medium format TLR that I am playing around with. The learning curve is steep for focusing, but it's a fun format and since I develop my own negatives, the stakes are low shooting 120. I have a few photography theory books to try and learn exposure and framing techniques, but as usual, time is the enemy and life is full. So it is slow.
I am looking forward to exploring around in here more and hopefully connecting with some folks who were super interested in film as a youth, and are jumping back into it.
Some of my favourite photographers are Peter Henry Emerson, Vivian Maier, Diane Arbus, Yousuf Karsh, Claude Cahun, Lee Miller-- to name a few



