Previously on journey to the silver side… I’d finally decided on a cheap (ish) rangefinder to start my journey with! The Olympus 35sp.

My first roll of film was an old expired roll of Jessops own film I had in the pocket of a camera bag. In hindsight it probably wasn’t the best choice was a test roll. I went walkabout and snapped a whole raft of ‘interesting’ things, old garden furniture, my husky Sonny and my wife. I was learning how to use a rangefinder and it was fun. Returning to film was cathartic. I wasn’t chimping every shot, I had to make every shot count, I couldn’t check exposure I had to trust my meter.

Film works for me and rangefinders in particular as I love the simplicity. You can adjust aperture and shutter speed, ISO is obviously dictated by the film you chose to use. There’s no video setting, toy camera filters, sweep panoramas. It’s just you and the camera creating something physical and tangible. It’s also frustrating! I wanted to see my shots, check exposure, did that shallow depth of field shot look good or should I have stopped down more? I wouldn’t find out till I got the roll developed…

At this point I was considering developing my own film but had no clue where to start so I took the roll of film to my local 1 hour photo type place. This in itself was an added frustration, there is only one shop in town where I can get film developed, there was a queue, I had to wait an hour! I know, an hour isn’t long but I wanted to see what I had got!

Once the hour was up I rushed back to the shop, handed over my ticket and grabbed my prints and… Well, I guess I was disappointed. There were plenty out of focus but that’s too be expected when learning the arcane arts of a rangefinder; exposure seemed ok so I was glad the meter was working but there were red marks over the corner of most of the shots. A light leak…

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