Fall Upgrade Week feels like an odd time to celebrate my move to a 50-year-old film camera, but there’s logic to it: not because film photos are timeless, or because I want to wax lyrical about warmth and grain and analog appeal, but because I don’t think there’s any better way to teach yourself about photography.
That’s how I got into film. At some point over the last decade, reviewing phones morphed more or less into reviewing cameras with touchscreens on the back. For a writer with no photography experience, that started to become a problem, and I realized that I needed to learn enough about cameras to hold my own. I was having to take my own product photos, too, so I needed to get better at the practical side of photography, not just the theory.
I started by borrowing an old DSLR from my office’s photography studio, using it for work photos and the odd bit of weekend practice. I tried to make myself think about framing, to consider camera modes, to learn how to take advantage of light. It helped, but only to a point. The problem with modern cameras, you see, is that everything can be made automatic. And sure, I started out doing things as manually as I could, but for obvious reasons, most of my photos sucked. When I switched the camera to its automatic mode, they sucked a whole lot less. Simply having the option to let the camera do the work meant that I inevitably did let the camera do the work, and I wasn’t learning much as a result.
Clearly, I needed a camera that could do less, not more. But cameras don’t come cheap, either — certainly not cheap enough for an entry-level journalist’s salary. Basic tech at a budget price? It had to be a film camera.
Since buying this camera, I’ve discovered that I’m a real sucker for Canon’s old logo. This 50mm lens has been the default for most of my film photos. I’m a big fan of the look of the old lenses too. This was such cutting-edge tech in 1973 that it needed to remind users what the power switch was for.
I turned to eBay, and for the princely sum of £129.01 (about $166 at the time, if I did my math right), I became the proud owner of a Canon EF SLR with a 50mm, f/1.8 lens and an original strap that was about ready to snap (and eventually did, prompting me to spend more than I probably should have on a replacement from Peak Design).
Learning the basics
Manufactured between 1973 and 1978, the Canon is comfortably older than me, but probably in better condition. It’s picked up a few dents and scratches over the years — some before I got my hands on it, plenty from after — but given it’s built of metal and has the weight and heft of a brick, I’m confident it’ll outlast me.
Most importantly, it’s basic. Real basic. This was just about top-of-the-line tech in the mid ‘70s, which means it has nifty features like an electro-mechanical shutter that only uses battery for exposures longer than half a second, but is entirely mechanical below that. But the most automated it gets is a shutter priority mode, meaning you pick the shutter speed and the camera automatically sets aperture. I used this for a bit, just to get to grips with things. Picking your shutter speed still means factoring in how light or dark your environment is, or how fast-moving your subject is, so there’s none of the set-and-forget approach that a modern camera allows for.
Shutter priority cameras are relatively rare, with aperture priority much more common. I’m pretty sure some of this dust is older than I am.
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