back to film; has it really been ten years?

I acquired a Voigtlander Bessa-R recently. It was a rather random desire to return to film and see what it’s like. Recommendations from friends and my dad, I finally bid successfully on ebay for the Bessa-R and for almost two weeks, it lay dormant on the shelf or packed away neatly in my going out bag, but without any film in it. Truth is I really didn’t know what to do with it. The last time I used a film camera properly was when I went to France with the choir in 98. And then it was a point & shoot. This time I had to relearn how to focus manually using a viewfinder and what those little arrows with the plus and minus signs mean. I still don’t quite grasp the effect of the difference between incident light and reflected light or even if those terms are correct.

When my dad was in London recently, he gave Andrew, Jayna and I a lesson in photography over coffee and I realized that it’s all about physics - light reflection, refraction, angles, etc. He claims it’s something he’s tried to teach me over the years but I never showed interest till now.

I bought a scanner last weekend to scan the negatives that I developed myself (with dad’s help). I was toying with the idea of getting an enlarger and making my own prints. You see that in movies all the time. Girl (or boy) in a room lit only by the faint, erried glow of red, swishing paper in solutions and hanging them on a line to dry. How cool is that?

I’ve since decided to hold on the darkroom set up and get my pics digitized for Flickr first. Check them out here. The Eiffel Tower pic was taken with the Panasonic FZ 50 and not the Bessa.