choosing your first film camera

Welcome to the very first tutorial blogpost of many in learning film photography. Our first topic is choosing your first film camera.

The different types of camera

There are a tons of film camera available online that you can choose from. Keh.com and ebay.com are the two of my trusted websites I have bought several of my Film cameras from and have not really encountered any problems. If you are lucky you can find cameras at a discounted prices in a thrift stores or garage sales. I own a few medium format or 120 format cameras and 35 mm film camera(s) and all of them are used in good condition. I also have shot with polaroid cameras and brownie cameras that date back early in the 1900’s.

Make sure the camera listing states that the lens is free of fungus, has a working light meter (if not I will make a topic solely in shooting without a light meter), and has a good seal.

35 mm vs. medium format

A 35 mm film camera takes 24 mm x 36 mm film compared to 6cm x 6 cm ( 6×4.5 or 6×7) film for medium format. That means that a medium format can accommodate for more details in the picture. Simply stated. We will get more details on this topic on the next few articles. But for now which ever one you chose should focus solely in learning the very basic in photography and owning your very first film camera.

Which camera to start with

I recommend starting with an SLR camera. It allows you to see your frame through the lens and allows you to chose from different lenses. My very first film camera was a canon AE-1 program. It allows you to shoot fully manual or in Program mode. That means you have the opportunity to set your Aperture, shutter speed manually or shoot in Program mode which lets you have the camera take over the settings. All you have to do is focus the lens manually and shoot away.

Lens and focal length

Lenses come in different sizes and weight. But film camera lenses weight a lot less that any digital camera lenses out there because of its design and no sophisticated (autofocus)motors built in them, they weight a lot less and usually are smaller in size. There are two types of camera lenses. A zoom lens and prime lens. A zoom lens lets you zoom in to your subject without having to get close up to the subject while a prime lens is set to a focal length. That means a 35mm lens cannot be zoomed. You have to physically get close to your subject to ‘zoom’ in. The main benefit of prime lens(es) are its weight, are relatively smaller and many time sharper than any zoom lens.

What are fixed lens

Fixed lens is just that. They are lenses that are attached to a camera permanently. It has what they call leaf shutter. Leaf shutter has its main benefits and my personal favorites. It is silent and allows you to shoot with flash at any shutter speed settings. SLR cameras has what we call flash sync setting that limits you to use flash anything above the flash sync setting.

Congratulations in advance in purchasing your very first film camera. Make sure to buy a nice strap and a lens cap to go along. We will continue to learn about how to load film, choose film, film speed and the photographic triad on the next blogpost. This website runs on coffee and if you found this helpful, please consider supporting this website. Thank you!