Back to the old ways
I recently went to see The Mentalists playing at Proud Galleries in Camden. Their guitarist, Kelly, had taken leave from the band, and this was the first Mentalists gig I’ve been to since they got their new guitarist, Emma. I was keen to get some photos, but my Canon was sick, so I fished out my old Minolta X-500 film camera. Now, I love that old camera, which is why I kept it, and I was really excited about using it again…
It’s manual focus, which was a worry with my old man eyesight, but I think the pictures came out nicely focused, and obviously it doesn’t have all of the controls that my more recent (film and digital) SLR’s have. Oh, and I kept forgetting I had to wind the film on!
While I was shooting, I came to realise how lazy shooting digital had made me. Now, I don’t exactly take a scattergun approach when I shoot digital, but I will take more than I really need, and if the framing is a little off, it’s easy to crop it in Lightroom. This time though, I was conscious that I only had one roll of 36 shots, and no instant feedback on the back of the camera! I found myself being much more careful about composition and exposure, because I had to make every shot count. I haven’t shot film on an SLR for a few years now, but I think it was a really useful exercise, if only to remind myself to take a bit more care to get it all right first time.
It’s made me keen to shoot more film, too. I think I may dig some of my old darkroom gear out of the garage, if I can find it…
Pics from the gig here:
You can check out the band at http://www.myspace.com/thementalists
