My first month shooting film has been a huge learning experience.
Now, over the course of this month, I was able to go out
and shoot a total of three times on the Mamiya 645 Super.
And as you can see,
we do not have the super with us right now, and I will explain that in a bit.
So let's get into it.
All right.
So shoot number one, I went to reche
canyon and it's just a nice scenic drive that I really enjoy.
And honestly, that shoot went pretty much exactly as I expected it to be.
It wasn't perfect.
I did have a few mistakes,
but overall, the experience of shooting film did get me inspired.
Even if these photos are bad.
This is just an overall really fun experience.
So overall, the process of loading the film,
using the light meter, looking through the waste level
viewfinder, it was incredibly cool and it was extremely inspiring.
And I actually did get a handful of photos that I really enjoyed.
For example,
the first shot I took was a frame within a frame through my car window.
I think it's got some really cool depth.
I really like how the shadows are hitting the hills,
and I like that you can also see another set of hills in the background.
Got my first photo.
There we go.
I also got this shot of a house that I really like.
It kind of had a bit of a creepy vibe just because it's like a lone house
in the middle of nowhere, and I really like that.
The rest of the shots
that I got of subjects were all out of focus, and that is simply
just because I didn't know that you're supposed
to look at the center circle in the viewfinder and line up the images.
Personally, I was expecting to make mistakes,
especially on my first shoot, so it honestly wasn't really a big deal to me.
And I got into film photography because I wanted a refreshing experience
and just something new to learn and have fun with.
And that's exactly what this was.
So shoot number one I would say it was a win for me because I had a blast.
And now shooting number two
is actually an unfortunate bummer compared to the first time I went shooting.
So my plan
was to go to the city of Redlands, and I wanted to shoot some of the houses
and just some cool landscapes throughout the town.
The houses were built in the 18 or 1900s, I believe.
So they just look much more different than anything I'm used to seeing around me.
So I had woken up at 5:30 AM and left and I was feeling inspired by Brae Hunziker.
I really love his videos, so I wanted to shoot some drone footage
as like a cool intro and I really enjoyed those shots.
That was a good start.
But once I got into the town of Redlands, that's where it all went downhill.
I'm not feeling very inspired by what I'm seeing so far. So
at the time I was feeling incredibly down on myself
and I was just kind of bummed that I made this trip out there, shot
all this footage, and I couldn't get any photos.
But honestly, I feel like it happens to all of us, so I want to be open about it.
Also, it didn't help that as I was walking around
people were kind of just coming out of their houses
and like they just didn't want me to kind of shoot,
which I understand older people were staring at me.
It just wasn't it wasn't a vibe that day.
And I'll be honest I was really trying
to get a video out of this because honestly,
sometimes it is hard for me to go out and shoot.
So the time I actually did drag myself out there, I really wanted to make a video.
So I finally decided to park my car next to a somewhat interesting house.
And when I went to take the photo, the shutter was not firing,
and I'm not sure
if the battery was dead or not, but I just changed it to a new one,
so I feel like it shouldn't have died at that point.
But I will explain a little bit more about that later.
And with the shutter not firing, I didn't really know what to do.
So I had thought maybe I forgot to wind the camera.
And as I was winding and advancing, I felt the film rolling through.
I thought it was maybe jammed on
Yeah, I don't
know what happened, but I went to wind it and it got all the way to 13.
And with medium format, you only have 15 frames.
So I literally only had three shots left and I did not fire a single shot
at that point.
What I had tried was switching it to the multiple exposure
mode on the shutter button.
And once I did it fired, it's not a good thing
So yeah, overall, I only got two actual shots
and the bad vibes did not stop there.
So I had been given a roll of expired 220 film, which I didn't know at the time.
But you need to have a different film back if you're going to shoot 22.0
here is to round two of trying to shoot and I moved to a different city.
I was walking around the city of Loma Linda.
I had finally gotten my groove back.
I even decided to
just leave the fx3 in the car so I can just focus on shooting.
And overall I spent like 2 hours shooting and then after I had sent them in
to get developed, I had gotten an email from the film lab
saying that my whole roll of 220 was blank.
So overall shoot number two was incredibly rough.
I pretty much wasted two whole rolls of film.
I only got two photos in
and yeah, just keep in mind that my shutter was not firing.
I repeat, the shutter was not firing And for shoot number three,
I actually wanted to shoot portraits with my girlfriend.
So we had went to this park.
I had a fresh battery in the camera.
I had a fresh roll of portrait. 400.
The park was beautiful. The lighting was beautiful.
My girlfriend's beautiful.
And when it came to shooting the first shot again, why is it not firing?
The shutter was not firing.
And when I was pressing the shutter, it would make a little clicking noise
one want. And
so that made me think like it wants to fire, but it's just not.
And as we're messing around with it, the shutter just goes off randomly.
And of all the probably 100 times we kept pressing the shutter
to see if it would go off. It went off twice.
So that's the thing
that started to make me realize that my camera was most likely broken.
So for the duration of shoot,
I switched it to the multiple exposure mode
and we got a couple of shots that we liked.
And throughout the shoot, I was really trying to get more posed images.
And honestly, I was trying to mimic cool portraits that I've seen before.
But then my girlfriend
wanted to take just a fun one, which was just her running and jumping.
And honestly, that actually became my favorite image out of all of them.
This was more of a fun and just goofy photo,
but that's how I would describe my girlfriend.
She's very fun, very goofy, very sweet.
And honestly, this image I feel like just really encapsulates who she is.
So I got to say, the lesson that I learned with
that is don't try to necessarily shoot what's cool, try to shoot
what's true to you and what's true to your subject.
And once I finished the first roll, I did consider putting through another roll.
But knowing my camera's broken, it was just an incredible bummer.
For the day. So I stopped shooting.
So the next day I went and checked eBay because I remember that they do have
a money back guarantee, and I had two days to return it before that expired.
So I returned the Mamiya 645 Super.
And I know I probably could have taken it to a repair shop,
but I did pay good money for a mint condition functioning Mamiya.
So I just decided to cut my losses there and return it.
So that is an extremely good thing about eBay.
You're backed by the money back guarantee.
So, yeah, I got to say R.I.P.
to the Mamiya 645 Super.
But I actually recently
picked up a Veronica ITRs I, which should be coming in the mail soon.
So that was a recap of my first month's shooting film.
And I got to say it was all a bunch of learning experiences, a bunch of mistakes.
But honestly, film is something I feel like you need to make the mistakes
in order to know what not to do.
So if you're a filmmaker or even a digital photographer, I definitely recommend
shooting film and giving it a try because it's honestly really, really fun.
So it is something
I definitely want to do more of as I continue to progress as a creative.
So anyways, that's all for this video.
If you enjoyed watching, go ahead and hit that like
and subscribe button and I'll see in the next one.
"And say, Okay,
let's roll
all around the back so."