This past week­end one of my friends sur­prised me with an early birth­day present: Nikon F2 and 50mm f1.4 lens. This is my first vin­tage Nikon cam­era and I just love the look of it. If you have ever been to our place, you prob­a­bly noticed a ran­dom col­lec­tion of vin­tage cam­eras that grace our liv­ing room — every­thing from the “Made in USSR” Lyu­bi­tel to the “Made in Japan” Pen­tax. But not a sin­gle Nikon, even though, that’s what we shoot with today. Inspired by this new gift, I decided to shoot a roll of film this past week­end. I didn’t expect how strange it was going to feel.

Of course, when I started study­ing pho­tog­ra­phy I shot film for a few years before the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion. When I switched over to the, rev­o­lu­tion­ary at the time, Nikon D200, I didn’t real­ize how much I started to rely on the instant feed­back the cam­era gave me. So when I picked up my film cam­era, popped in a roll of film and brought the viewfinder to my eye, I felt very strange. I real­ized that I can’t just start snap­ping away and check the results instan­ta­neously. I had to meter the scene, select my shut­ter speed and aper­ture, man­u­ally focus the lens and only then take the shot. There were only 36 expo­sures I could take. That was it! After ask­ing a cou­ple we had lunch with to pose for me, I felt very inse­cure all of a sudden.

What if the film is messed up? What if the cam­era back is leak­ing light on the unex­posed film? What if I didn’t get the man­ual focus set right? Then I started think­ing, how can you EVER be sure that you got the shot you wanted on film? I don’t think I could han­dle wait­ing a week or two before I could take a look at the pho­tos I took.

That’s when I real­ized how much I could grow as a pho­tog­ra­pher if I shot film more often. Here are some lessons I learned from my expe­ri­ence shoot­ing film for the first time in the last 6 years. These carry over to dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy as well and I hope you find some of them encouraging.

1. Know your stuff. Instant feed­back, while very help­ful for the most part, can be a crutch when it comes to really know­ing your equip­ment and set­tings. So often instead of think­ing “Oh, my light meter shows that the scene is too bright, let me decrease my shut­ter speed by 2/3 of a stop,” I just scroll the shut­ter wheel to the left a bit. I spend less and less time look­ing at my light meter to see what is actu­ally occur­ring in the scene and more of just look­ing at the instant feed­back on the LCD screen. Not that there is any­thing wrong with doing that, but ask your­self, do you really know your stuff even if you didn’t get to see the results right away? I think that you will build more con­fi­dence when you start rely­ing on what you know in your head which in the end will make you a bet­ter photographer.

2. Slow down. Another rea­son I felt so uncom­fort­able shoot­ing film with a man­ual focus len is because it took me much longer than usual to get the set­tings ready before I could start shoot­ing. I had to actu­ally stop and think about every move I was mak­ing. Again, there is no way for you to see what the results are until the film comes back from the lab. And on such an impor­tant event as let’s say a wed­ding you can­not afford to make mis­takes. By slow­ing things down I was actu­ally able to think more about what I was doing as well as enjoy the process of pho­tog­ra­phy even more.

3. More sub­stance and less fluff. With only 36 expo­sures in a roll, you can’t afford to just keep tak­ing pho­tos of the same scene and hop­ing that one of them will turn out. I found that I was more inten­tional with what I was shoot­ing and had a clearer vision of what I wanted to capture.

While I am not plan­ning on switch­ing over to film any­time soon, I am very excited about using it more often in my per­sonal work and pos­si­bly incor­po­rat­ing it at times with our busi­ness. I’m also eager to see the ways in which it will con­tinue to grow me as a photographer.