Photography

Photography can be fun, but pretty frusturating at the same time. I love taking pictures and editing them, but hate using the film cameras. If you've never used a film camera before, taking a picture and getting a final result is a very long process that I am going to tell you about. The very first step is putting film into the film camera correctly, if you don't put it in correctly, the pictures won't turn out. When your camera is ready, you take the pictures until your film is full. After this, you wind the film back into the canister, and then take it out of the camera. Sadly, this is only the beginning.

When the film is in the canister, you get all the supplies you need for the next step. You put everything into a black bag that has little holes in the side for your arms. (you put it into a bag so it doesn't get exposed to the light.) You take the film out of the canister, and put it on a little reel, and then into a black bucket with a lid, and then take it out of the bag. You must be thinking...ahh finally! It must be coming to an end!..But wait, cause it's not! When you have the black bucket ready, you put chemicals into it to develop the film. You put the developer in it for 6-7 min., the stop for 30 sec, and then you put it in the fix for 4-7 min. You rinse your little bucket and then take the film off the reel that was in the bucket. At this point, your film is either a piece of crap, or looking really good. Yesterday, after this VERY VERY long process, mine looked like a piece of crap! So lucky me, I get to do this whole thing over again on Tuesday.

If it did turn out, you would blow it up in the dark room with the machine that projects the picture onto the table. You turn off the light on the machine, put a piece of unexposed photo paper under it, and then turn on the light for 2-5 seconds. When this is done, you repeat the cycle of chemicals again, only this time for different amounts of time. You put it in the developer for 60 seconds, in the stop for 30, and in the fix for 7-10 min. After all of this is done, you should have a beautiful black and white, maybe blurry, film picture!!!

I ask myself regularly why we are doing this, when the technology is so much better now. It's not like we are all going to go out and buy all the supplies so we can make film pictures. I think it was good to learn how to do it once, but I don't think we should keep doing it with every assignment. The pictures NEVER turn out, because kids are always screwing up the chemicals, and exposing the paper. I think that instead of wasting so much time on this, we should learn how to use the technology we have today.