Ploafmaster General

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Film Revolution?

It's no secret that I've been shooting a crap load of film since February (well, as much as can be called a crap load for a guy with a non-artistic desk job). Over the past few months, however, I've witnessed the outmoded medium take hold with quite a few people in my sphere of influence.

I've already highlighted my friend Dave whose pictures seem to improve with every roll, but a few others have come to the fore. My homie Jake, who's only recently acquired a camera from his dad, started clamoring for a film camera since Dave and I started producing lots of output a few months ago. He's shot a single roll of film on my flakey back-up Nikon F, so unfortunately there's not much to show for it yet, but he hopes to put a roll through his new-old Pentax ME Super in the near future to really cut his teeth.

After some explanation of manual film cameras to Mugs, my brother, he decided to drop some bills on a truly stellar deal for a Minolta SR-T 101 and now he's been shooting film for the better part of the past week. He took his wife along for some picture-taking, convinced her to start shooting film again, and she produced some gorgeous results.

Regular users of Flickr already know that film isn't dead (it just smells funny ;-) ), but I'm glad to see several people close to me taking it up either again or for the first time. I wonder how many other people are spooling up rolls around the country, and whether its making any real comeback. I believe the constraints that come with shooting film with manual adjustments provide a valuable learning experience, and I'm happy that folks care about picture-taking enough to educate themselves. I really can't talk about this, of course, without acknowledging the impact my wife has had on this whole post even existing. She gave me my SLR, and from her gift and teaching me how to shoot, everybody I've mentioned has been affected by what you can burn on that thin strip of plastic.