From some of my past blog posts, you now know I’m getting into collecting film cameras.

When I first started out taking pictures as a kid, I used an all manual Canon camera.  And I got pretty darn good with that thing, where most of the prints I got back were just as I wanted them.  But, then digital came out and I jumped at the Canon Digital Rebel (300D) and haven’t looked back at film since….

Until I started collecting these cameras…..now I have the film bug.

I bought a 35mm Canon AE-1 Program camera off of Ebay that came with the FD 50mm 1.8 lens…..and I decided to run some film through it to see if it worked. I just did some landscape type shots, set the camera on the auto mode (well, as ‘auto’ as a manual camera can be) and then took the film to Walgreens. I made sure I bought black and white film that Walgreens can develop…the C-41 (BW400CN to be exact). Well, the prints came back….some are green tinted, some are brown tinted and not a single one of them was actually black and white.

Other than the color issue (which I now believe is Walgreen’s fault), the images are nice and sharp and I know that the camera works perfectly. I’ve found a lab near my office that develops film, they even do 120 film and understand film from holga and lomo cameras. I will be using them for any future film developing!!!

From reading a bit online, sometimes the lab tech at these drug store film developing places may run the black and white film through the color process.  I’m not sure how they could have done this,  but it happens.  I do not own a scanner, so I haven’t been able to scan the negatives to see if they are green and brown tinted like the prints are.

Here’s a few of the film images for you.  Thankfully I asked for the images on CD also (I don’t own a scanner right now) So I was able to tweak these in photoshop.

The top image is the AFTER version. I opened it in photoshop and just chose ‘desaturate’. Nothing else was done in photoshop other than resizing these images for the web.  The bottom image is the BEFORE version…how Walgreens developed it.

*I must also note that this was a pretty overcast and dreary day…so the skies are blown out, there were no clouds and everything was just solid gray.

Depending on your monitor calibration, you may not see much of a difference between the images…but I can assure you, that the way these are displaying on my screen are the way they look on the CD and the prints…there’s a huge difference.

One other funny thing I have to mention….. I have seen the world through a crop sensor camera for YEARS now.  From the Digital Rebel, to the XTi and now the 50D.  I use the 50mm 1.8 prime lens quite a bit (and now the 50mm 1.4).  BUT…to look through a normal 35mm film camera with a 50mm lens on it is a whole new world……everything is so much WIDER now!  lol  This makes me want to do two things…. save up for the 5D Mark II and also purchase another FD lens for the AE-1 35mm film camera, something even wider than the 50mm!

I did load up the Diani Mini lomo camera with film and brought that with me to Epcot yesterday, unfortunately drinking as much as I did at Epcot (it was my birthday after all!), I had somehow managed to set the Diani Mini in B mode (bulb), so every single photo from that roll is blurry because I did not have it in N mode, which would have given me sharper shots at 1/100th of a second, LOL.  Well, live and learn I say!  Next roll I’ll be sober and make sure it’s on the right setting!

Would you like to see one of the photos from the Diana Mini?  One of the silly, drunken, bulb mode, blurry photos?