I sold my Sony A7 IV in a camera shop in Melbourne and bought a Nikon FM2, a film camera made in 1982, with the proceeds. The shop owner, a man named Roger who had been selling cameras for forty years, looked at me with a mixture of respect and pity. 'You know you will not know if you got the shot until you develop the film,' he said. 'That is the point,' I replied. For the next six months, I traveled through Southeast Asia with thirty-six exposures per roll, no autofocus, no ISO dial, and no screen to review my mistakes. It was the most intentional I have ever been with a camera.
The Cost of Shooting Film
Film photography is not cheap. A roll of Kodak Portra 400 costs twelve dollars. Developing and scanning at a professional lab costs another fifteen to twenty dollars. Each photograph costs roughly one dollar before you print it. Over six months, I spent eight hundred dollars on film and processing. For that price, I could have bought a high-end digital lens. But the cost changes how you shoot. With digital, I would take three hundred photos in a day and delete two hundred eighty of them. With film, I took three rolls of thirty-six and considered every frame. The result was a higher percentage of keepers and a deeper engagement with my subjects.
The Learning Curve
Shooting film forces you to understand exposure. There is no auto-mode to save you. You set the aperture, the shutter speed, and the ISO, and you live with the result. I made mistakes. I underexposed an entire roll in the temples of Angkor Wat because I forgot to adjust for the contrast between shadow and light. I overexposed a portrait in Hanoi because I misread the meter. But each mistake taught me something that digital had allowed me to ignore. I learned to read light with my eyes instead of my histogram. I learned to anticipate a moment instead of spraying the shutter. I learned that a technically imperfect photograph can be emotionally perfect.
The Developing Process
Waiting for film to develop is an exercise in patience. I mailed my rolls to a lab in Bangkok every three weeks and received digital scans by email a week later. The anticipation was part of the experience. Opening a folder of new scans felt like Christmas morning, except sometimes the presents were disappointing. But the good scans were different from digital files. Film handles highlights differently, compressing bright skies into creamy gradients that digital sensors struggle to replicate. The grain adds texture that sharp digital files lack. And the limited dynamic range forces you to make choices about what to expose for, which often results in more dramatic images.
Should You Switch
I am not suggesting that every traveler should shoot film. Digital is more practical, more affordable in the long run, and more forgiving. But if you feel like your photography has become mechanical, if you find yourself scrolling through a thousand images on your hard drive without remembering taking any of them, film might reconnect you with the process. Start with a cheap point-and-shoot film camera and a few rolls of inexpensive film. See how it feels to have only thirty-six chances to capture a day. See how it feels to wait. See how it feels to fail. The lessons you learn will improve your digital photography too.
