Three Hours Before Your Flight...

[PepperElf]

Quoth Chromatix

I have the opposite approach to photography, probably because I started on film (and with a camera that only took 8 frames per roll, ouch).

While I might repeat a shot two or three times in a row as insurance against jitter, I'm only taking photos that I think will be good in the first place. So I've thought about whether it's likely to "come out" in advance.

What kind of camera is that?

Quoth MadMike

I took about 700 on my last cruise. Ended up deleting about 100 or so because they didn't turn out & I couldn't touch them up.

and honestly i do too. only i don't really delete much.

[wolfie]

Quoth Chromatix

I have the opposite approach to photography, probably because I started on film (and with a camera that only took 8 frames per roll, ouch).

Same here - 2 1/4 by 3 1/4 size 120 paper-backed film. Was yours a "box camera" with the waist-level viewfinder too?

[Sonoma]

Another proud D40 owner here. Camera's about 6 years old, and I was shooting with the original battery when we took our cruise to Alaska last year. I did have a backup, but it was not needed. I knew I'd be doing a lot of rapid-fire shots, and in colder temperatures, so I wanted a backup. It was purchased through my preferred online company well before our cruise.

Wound up with around 2900 shots taken during the course of a 7-day cruise, but we're all scrapbookers, so we took daily pics of our towel animals and the food. And the whale watching trips & glacier calving meant lots of continuous shots, with most of the pics being deleted. Thank goodness for digital.

[Jester]

Quoth Mike Taylor

Seriously, why do people not buy these things AHEAD OF TIME and have them ready to go?

I vote for profound and utter stupidity as the answer to that question.

[Merriweather]

Quoth Sonoma

Wound up with around 2900 shots taken during the course of a 7-day cruise, but we're all scrapbookers, so we took daily pics of our towel animals and the food. And the whale watching trips & glacier calving meant lots of continuous shots, with most of the pics being deleted. Thank goodness for digital.

Hello fellow scrapbooker.

I never had a camera as a child, don't even recall what my parents had cause they used it so rarely. I have so few photos of my childhood it's pathetic, and that includes what I inherited from my parents (what I could find, my mom just kept what she had in a box, and lots were lost or damaged). For a scrapbooker, that's maddening.

My first camera (age 13) was one of those cartridge ones, a 126 I think - took 3½ by 3½ photos (or was it 4x4?). Anyone remember flash cubes? Didn't get a proper 35mm til around 30.

I always had a strict budget, and had to minimize film & developing costs. That wasn't so bad til we moved to the UK for close to a decade, and we are both history nuts, so we were out every weekend trekking around castle ruins, romain mosaics, stately homes, you name it. But the more I spent on film & developing, the less I could save for the more expensive trips, so I had to balance so carefully what I actually took photos of. And it was never enough.

Just a few years after we came back to the states digital cameras came out, and prices got down to affordable (boy were those things low res though). We got one just before a special, saved up for ages, trip to Disneyworld. I took over 600 photos It felt so liberating to know that I could take all I wanted, no cost limitations of buying film, and then pick the best to print if I couldn't afford to print them all. I could take a photo of something that I didn't think would turn out, just in case - and surprisingly, sometimes I got some great unusual shots I never would have with film cause I'd never have wasted the film to try.

My photos are a lot different these days. Lots of my film photos from vacations could be replaced with a post card. A lot are limited to the main attraction, can't take photos of everything when you've a limited budget for film & developing. But often, my memories are of some of the smaller things at a place, things I didn't think "worthy" of a photo at the time. Now, I take pics of all sorts of silly things (I adore my zoom for details), and my vacation shots have a whole different feel.

And especially as a scrapbooker, I love taking photos of everyday things & activities I'd never have taken with film. I would so love to have photos from years ago that just showed places I lived, the coffee shop at the corner, etc. And while I do have everyday shots of my daughter, even though I had a limited film budget back then, I have ever so many more casual, nothing special going on photos of my granddaughter now, using digital.

I love digital, it's just so freeing. My suggestion for anyone who loves film (and it does have it's advantages) and hasn't really tried digital is to get a cheap but good digital, and use according to place, activity and mood. Go totally wild with the digital, no holds barred, zoom in, zoom out, take photos you have no expectation of coming out - you may find you love it for certain places or events (no one ever said you have to stick to one or the other). But to really see the difference, you have to go a bit crazy - hubby likes digital, but doesn't really see the contrasts to it and film, because he still only takes a few photos of the normal views, doesn't get creative and go for unusual details, and doesn't take a photo if he's not pretty sure it will come out.

Oh, one cute thing, I was helping my granddaughter with her Brownie camera badge, and found an old film camera to show her - her first comment was "where do you see the photos?". She was amazed that people took photos without being able to see them right then, and had to wait to take them to a shop "but how do you know they'll turn out ok?"

oops, sorry, my apologies for this being so long, to anyone who actually made it to the end. I'm alone & bored today, can you tell?

[laborcat]

Quoth Merriweather

oops, sorry, my apologies for this being so long, to anyone who actually made it to the end. I'm alone & bored today, can you tell?

I don't know about anyone else, but I kinda like reading people's stories. It gives me a real feel for personalities beyond the usual "customers suck" aspect.

[Chromatix]

Quoth wolfie

Same here - 2 1/4 by 3 1/4 size 120 paper-backed film. Was yours a "box camera" with the waist-level viewfinder too?

Not quite, it was a box camera but had a conventional viewfinder. It took 127 film, available in 8 and 12 frame rolls IIRC. The shutter was a mechanical fixed-speed affair, and the lens was very primitive and tended to produce a lot of colour fringing (which is clearly visible on the better photos despite the large frame size).

Ah, here it is. I'm not actually that old, but it's about right for my dad's family.

I still actually have the camera, but it's no longer properly light-tight and the film is incredibly hard to find now.

[Shalom]

Quoth Merriweather

My first camera (age 13) was one of those cartridge ones, a 126 I think - took 3½ by 3½ photos (or was it 4x4?). Anyone remember flash cubes? Didn't get a proper 35mm til around 30.

Same here. Mine was an Instamatic 44, absolute bottom of the line, but it was a "real" camera. Had been my mother's, but she'd "upgraded" to 110 film (which took rectangular pictures, so it must be "better", right? We didn't realise at the time that it was just more enlarged.)

And yes, I remember flash cubes. I still have some hoarded, but the problem is that most of my 126 cameras used PX825 batteries, which are even harder to find nowadays than 126 film, and that's saying a lot. Without the batteries, the flash (and in the case of the Instamatic Reflex, the entire camera) is useless. The later Instamatics took Magicubes, which were chemically fired and didn't need batteries.

Incidentally, 126 is 35mm wide. It's just square rather than rectangular (28x28 rather than 24x36), and unperforated. I've got a couple empty 126 carts that I'd like to try and reload with modern film stock.

I love digital, it's just so freeing. My suggestion for anyone who loves film (and it does have it's advantages) and hasn't really tried digital is to get a cheap but good digital, and use according to place, activity and mood. Go totally wild with the digital, no holds barred, zoom in, zoom out, take photos you have no expectation of coming out - you may find you love it for certain places or events (no one ever said you have to stick to one or the other).

How about do both? Go around with the digital, and when you get a shot you like, pull out the film camera and replicate the shot.

Oh, one cute thing, I was helping my granddaughter with her Brownie camera badge, and found an old film camera to show her - her first comment was "where do you see the photos?". She was amazed that people took photos without being able to see them right then, and had to wait to take them to a shop "but how do you know they'll turn out ok?"

I get this all the time from my younger relatives. "Where's the screen?" "Um, you do realize that this camera was manufactured in 1905?"

Or, "So how do you zoom it?" "With your legs."

Quoth Chromatix

I still actually have the camera, but it's no longer properly light-tight and the film is incredibly hard to find now.

I still shoot 126 and 127, among other obsolete formats (122 is one of my favorites. It takes 83x140 mm negatives. Good luck finding anyone who can print that, though.) 126 is just about impossible to find anymore, but 127 is still out there, or you can do what I do and make your own: I have a bunch of spools and backing papers from old films, and respool it with 46mm bulk film that I found on eBuy years ago and kept in the freezer.

I was gonna say B&H stock 127, but then I saw your location. If you can order from fotoimpex.de, they have it in regular stock, in B&W negative and color slide films. Pretty sure they ship anywhere in Europe. A strip of black electrical tape around the joint where the back comes off will help with the lightproofing. Maybe it's time to put that one back in service...
.