After two years of shooting exclusively digital with my Sony A7R IV, I did something that surprised even myself: I bought a 35mm film camera. Not as a nostalgic novelty, but as a serious creative tool.

The decision came from a growing sense that I was taking too many photos and creating too few images. With digital, it's so easy to fire off hundreds of shots in a single session. The unlimited capacity of SD cards removes any friction from the shooting process – which sounds like a good thing, but it had made me lazy.

The Gift of Limitation

Film forces you to think before you shoot. With only 36 exposures on a roll, every frame matters. You become more intentional about composition, lighting, and timing. You start to visualize the final image before pressing the shutter.

This constraint has fundamentally changed how I approach photography, even when I'm shooting digital. I'm more deliberate, more thoughtful, more present in the moment.

The Scanning Adventure

I mentioned in my About page that I scan my own film at home, which probably sounds like masochism to most people. And honestly, they're not entirely wrong – it's time-consuming, technical, and sometimes frustrating.

But there's something deeply satisfying about controlling the entire process from start to finish. When you develop and scan your own film, you truly understand every step of image creation. You learn to see the subtleties in tonality and color in ways that digital post-processing never taught me.

If you're considering film photography, my advice is simple: start with one camera, one lens, and one type of film. Learn that combination intimately before expanding. And most importantly, embrace the slowness. That's the whole point.