At the start of this blog in October I wrote about my return to film from mobile cell phone photography.  In November I followed up with a post on the joy of visiting Blue Moon Camera in Portland, Oregon to buy an actual roll of film. After 18 months of nothing but shooting with my iPhone, shooting with film was pretty different:

After a lovely chat with Jake Shivery about the various pros and cons of different types of film, I walked out with a battery, one roll of Portra for people and one roll of Ektar for landscapes.  I put the roll of Portra in my camera and set my focus for the next 36 exposures on people. After the first exposure, my first words were, “There’s no preview on this thing!!!!!!”

Well, the next installment is finally here! In December I actually dropped off a roll of Portra 400 36 exposure roll to be developed and printed. (It takes awhile to shoot that many exposures of people!) Yesterday I got my developed film strips and prints! Yay! Portra truly is great film for taking photos of people. The smooth skin textures, the lovely softness in color is just amazing.  This is my favorite print from the roll:

You can see by the bend in the lines that the paper is a good weight.  What’s harder to see is the wonderful ever so slightly textured finish.  The folks at Blue Moon Camera did a great job of printing these.  Each print is gorgeous! Here’s the flyer that they included:

And finally, actual film strips! Do you remember these?

I am so excited by the results that I’m going to get another roll of Portra and take more photos of people! But first, I have to finish shooting the roll of Kodak Ektar that I have in the camera.  Or, gasp, actually have 2 cameras going at the same time.  Here’s to experimentation!

I would love to hear about your adventures in film.  Leave a pingback or encourage others by leaving a comment about your own recent experiences using film.  Thanks! Jennifer

All images and writing by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2012 and ©2013

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