Photography: The old school way

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Sometimes I miss the good old days of film photography.  Knowing how to set the f-stop and shutter speed along with picking the right ISO for the film was an art and not something you just did by pointing your phone and clicking.  I ran across a great project on Kickstarter for a 3D printed Box camera that uses 120 film spools.  The basic black box version will run you $79, but if you want it in a weathered red, blue or yellow it will run you $119.  It comes with a 1/200 of a second shutter and apertures from f5.6 to f32 and a 95mm lens.  It comes with spools where you will manually wind the film and manually advance each picture.  They plan to offer additional lenses in the future to allow for standard, wide angle and telephoto pictures.  Unfortunately, this project is already closed, but you can still follow along and find out when you can get one of your own.  You can check it out on Kickstarter.

5 thoughts on “Photography: The old school way”




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  2. I don’t miss film cameras, I miss the dark room experience. Loved doing “photoshop” effects all by hand and exposure. I wouldn’t mind doing it again, but a home darkroom is not a cheap small hobby.

    1. I too miss the good old ‘burn and dodge’ days. There was something really neat about physically making the picture look the way you want it to instead of just clicking with a mouse on the computer.

  3. I started out helping my dad in the dark room in the 60’s. My job was to rock the developer bath with the photos in them, and then into the other solutions. My first camera was an old brownie b&w.
    I “got into” film in 81 with my first SLR, but didn’t really do a lot with it. My first dSLR was in 2010, and I upgraded it with a new one in late 2016. I don’t even use 99% of the automatic stuff. Unless I’m in a real hurry, I set the ISO, f/stop, shutter all manually to get what I want. Raw is the only thing I shoot. Mostly wild life, plants, scenery, air shows once in a while.
    I don’t miss the film days that much, but learned something I use to this day. Back then, depending on what you were shooting, it could be a day or week be before you developed the film. I got into a habit of writing down in a little notebook the various settings I used for each shot when I could. Nice feedback of what did or didn’t work. Now, the exif data pretty much gives you that, or the raw data in LR or PS.

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