Background:
Okay, so for a while now I've been wanting to get a
35mm film camera to learn film. I really was against this idea because it would mean a whole new thing to learn. I had my hands full with just learning
digital photography. You know....the gear, the settings, the WB, the ISO, the aperature, AE bracketing, Av mode, Tv mode, Full M mode and so on and so on. I mean it doesn't stop. On top of that you have to know your digital software like picasa, lightroom, photoshop, elements, etc. so you can make your digital pictures even more pimpy. It's a lot to take in and sometimes it gets really confusing.
Soooo....as you can see, learning film is a real pain in the butt! I'm sure it would be fun, but a pain indeed because I would have to learn everything all over, but with film. This is like learning how to write left handed or snowboard switch. It's no longer a digital file but film negatives. I have to know what film is going to produce what kind of result. How's the noise? Is the sharpness there? The colors look good? This is just some of the worries with film and I'm going to have to figure it all out by trial and error. The final image will be based on the film I choose, the settings I use, and my development procedure (someday will develop my own film). Oh and of course my photographic eye....thats probably the most important thing.
So there are trade-offs to shooting film and digital. I expect I will be shooting mostly with digital and fine tuning my skills with film. Who knows though. Large format rules the roost when it comes to image quality even in today's digital world. Heh, maybe someday large format?! Who knows.....Anyways, here is my
Nikon FA. It such a sweet camera and has top notch manual controls to let me do just about anything in the manual world. It even has
titanium honeycomb shutter curtains! Haha, I love saying that. Right now I only have the
AI 50mm 1.4 lens and I suspect thats all I'm gonna have.
In continuing with off camera flash...I took my work to the streets. Okay well not the streets really but to the rice patty fields. I saw a couple of photos that had a cool sunset or sky in the bg, black foreground, but with a lit subject that really tickled my interest. I wanted to mimic this and practice a bit so I gathered up my gear and drove out to the fields and set up my lights and tripod. Still, I only had 1 flash at the time connected via pc sync cord and yah........again it must have slipped off about a dozen times. Anyways after a few shots I started to get the hang of this. This is far from magic but with 1 flash and it being my first time out, I think it turned out okay. I created something I've never created before in photography and that got me stoked.
I feel like there is so much to learn. I always thought photography was simple. Find something cool, get your camera and take a picture, but I'm learning that you have to do a lot of work, studying, setup, etc........just to get 1 picture. On top of that, you have to learn the 'other' half of photography....post processing and that's never ending. Soooo, you put in all that time and you want to show it to the world right? To do this, it takes time because you have to post them on blogs or photo sites like flickr, picasa web. Get this, all this for no $$$ on the back end. Well not yet anyways. If you really wanna make $$ you have to then post your pictures on stock photos sites, submit to photo magazines and that too takes time! To wrap it up, the whole process takes a lot of time and dedication. I can see a lot of people just quiting ........not take pictures for a few months cause things get busy in their lives. 
The way I think about it is........photography is like a big piggy bank. You put in and put in and over time the bank gets heavier and someday, when its full... it'll break open and you'll get huge rewards. Well, who knows how big the piggy bank is though.....gotta wait and see!
