I’m new to film photography, and I only just got my fourth film roll shot, within a year of owning the Canon AE-1. The last roll I had developed was fucked up by the lab, and costs a pretty penny so I was quite pissed off. It took me 6 months to shoot the next roll, which I just finished a couple weeks back.
Discouraged by the badly developed film and not wanting that to happen again, I reached out to a local film photographer for help. He agreed to developed my film the next time he was going to do his own rolls too. I was going to let him do it all and just pay for the well developed and scanned photos, but then he asked if I wanted to come and watch.
He said he’d be happy to teach me the whole process if I wanted to learn, and of course I did! Though I was a bit hesitant because I was scared I would ruin my own film. I had watched a few videos a while ago so I had a general idea how film is developed, but we still went through the whole theory before getting into the action.
Lights out!
After some fumbling in total darkness and getting the film into the light sealed container, it was a pretty easy process. I was very nervous and excited when opening the container to see what, if any, pictures had made it. You never know with film, and I’m not the most careful of shooters so I might have exposed the images all wrong, it’s a full manual camera after all.
Lo and behold, there is a full roll of images, clearly visible. Success! Much excitement! I’m sure there is a fair number of less than perfect shots, but with a fast glance, most look pretty alright.
The film was hanged to dry overnight and I’m heading back tomorrow morning to scan the images. I’ll show you as soon as I have them.