Good morning everybody today i'm at Cregennan Lakes in Mid Wales it's a fantastic spot
we've got these lakes we've got this big mountain in the background well it's not that big but a
little mountain in the background and today i thought i'd try out a 30 year old camera i've
got the canon AE1 it's a fantastic SLR camera i've got a 28 mm 50 mm 100 mm and then 70-210mm
as well and also some really noisy geese i have got just basic color film 35 millimeter
iso 200 it has been so long since i've done this i just got to remember how to actually do it
yeah that's pulling through
i haven't shot properly on film since around about 1998. so i just wanted to try this
out and to see whether digital photography has improved my photography skills drastically
or kind of eating away at them with the ae1 it does have a light meter built into the camera
so there is a needle on the side when you look through the viewfinder showing you what aperture
to choose for the shutter speed that you pick i'm going to try and frame the shot up a little bit
better now i'm going to put this mountain bang in the middle of the frame so the next thing is focus
which is a bit tricky i think it's about there
so it really is a case of checking everything before you take the photograph i'm so glad i
set the iso for what the film was obviously you can't change iso and film and then it was going
through the process of seeing what the meter says inside i'm not bringing a light meter
i'm not going to do any of that jazz i'm using the meter inside the camera just seeing what
it's like to use this camera like we use digital cameras today it's halfway between f11 and f16
i'm at 1 125th of a second right time to take the photograph it's half between 16 and 22 now
the other thing is i don't know what that photo will look like you'll see the photos way before
i do it's really bringing back memories of when i used to shoot with film but it's a lot of fun
now one thing that film doesn't cope too well with are high dynamic ranges
but i'm gonna see how this copes with this scene in front of me
it's basically the sun catching the lake cadariderous in the background and the sun
in the shot so i'm guessing 1 1000th of a second so the fastest the shutter will go maybe f-16
have a look to see wow so if the sun's not in the shot and i'm just pointing it down at the
lake it is around about f-16 so i'm going to put it on f22 it'll probably be a horrible shot but
i want to try just to see what it's like because sometimes with digital i take shots like this well
that was hard to look at
and that's probably not advisable either i was surprised at how this one came out the sunstar
effect looks good but there is obviously a reflective surface within the camera giving
that brighter line down the right hand side of the frame if you do take a shot like this be
really careful where you look and don't do it with a telephoto lens but i was on a 28 millimeter nice
wide angle lens so it's not going to damage my eye and i didn't look at the sun in the frame either
what an awesome day i've got here i did check the forecast i planned it as normal
could do with a little bit more cloud in the sky but beggars can't be choosers so let's say
i'm shooting at 28 millimeters 160th of a second we'll be fine that'll give me f11
i might have to go a bit faster one one twenty fifth of a second and f eight i'm
happy with those settings what i'm gonna do is put this island bang in the middle of the shot
hopefully that one will be a good one
now i've got the 70 to 210 millimeter on it's proper old-school lens and it's got the tuber
kind of zoom function on it problem with that is that's the focus as well so i'm going to have to
be really careful not to knock the focus out of place i'll change it to f8 1 250th of a second
and focus is good
all right let's try one at 210
see what that's like so that's our 5.6 one 250th
obviously there's no image stabilization in this
at 210 millimeters i can really see the movement of my hands
so hopefully 250th of a second is a fast enough shutter speed to get rid of that movement
there's a bunch of trees over there and as long as the wind doesn't catch the
water and ruffle it up too much should be able to get a good shot although i've
probably just jinxed it by saying that it's fantastic coming out and shooting with film
i'm not going to turn into one of those film snobs but it's good fun nevertheless
with digital photography it's such a quick process
whereas with this everything just slows down and it is actually really nice
and it kind of forces you to relax and it forces you to actually think about the photographs that
you're taking and that's the beauty of film everything slows down you think about the
shot you think about your settings it kind of forces you to think about the composition as well
now this is where it's going to be a bit tricky i've got my settings there's this sheep walking
up the hill here i'm going to try and get a shot of him with this camera he's going to be tricky
because it's about capturing that moment and he's completely ignoring me or should i say she
come on look up
this is why i don't photograph animals hello
stay there that's it that's it stay there stay there say that
stay that stay there
yep i'm not destined to be a wildlife photographer especially with film now that light is coming
in and out the clouds are building up and it's creating really nice pockets of light
but it's trickier to shoot on film with everything manual probably going to take a couple more shots
i'm on 23. i know quite a few of those aren't brilliant but some of them hopefully will
come out all right but there are just some really interesting shapes in the light and in the layers
oh that didn't feel too good note to self don't put the thumb on that side when winding it on this
way in holding my thumb on the left hand side this actually stopped the film from clearing the last
shot giving me an overlap between the two shots shooting film really is bringing back some of
those old feelings that i used to have in being so frustrated in not being able to know what i'd
taken and how i'd taken it until maybe weeks down the line digital really does give you that instant
feedback and film really doesn't now i actually had to come back to this location because it was
so fantastic it's the next morning we've got a quite a moody sunrise and there are clouds
on the top of the mountains but again got my film camera at photo number 30. i've already
taken a photo of these trees silhouetted with the sun in the background so i'm just going to
try and get a shot of these layered mountains the sun has gone behind the clouds so i'm not
going to get any more sunlight or any direct sunlight yeah this scene is absolutely fantastic
i've underexposed it because i know it's got a really bright background and hopefully those
layers will show out yeah the light is going see if i can get a shot at the boat house
it really is hard working out your exposures without a proper light meter and i can see
why when people used to shoot with film they'd have a handheld light meter
so you get a reading of different parts of the scene that you're photographing
the meter inside this ae1 is okay but it doesn't give you all of the information good fun though
and that is the end of the film i can't pull it anymore i'm not going to force it because
i don't want to break that film now there is a button on the bottom i've got to press
that to release this side then i can wind everything back yeah that button's pressed
feels like it's winding so that's basically putting all of the film and all of the exposures
i've taken back into the roll so i know when i pull this up now all that film will be across yeah
so that's an exposed roll ready to go now i thought having 36 exposures in
a roll of film would be really limiting and in the past when i used to shoot film
it did feel absolutely limiting because it felt like i was changing the roles
all the time however i was shooting sports but with landscapes it just gets you to slow down
it does feel like you've got quite a few shots to go through on the first day i still had 10 shots
to go so i only took 24 images normally when i go out for a walk i'm taking hundreds so maybe this
is teaching me a lesson in controlling the amount of times when i actually press the shutter button