Why I’m Adding Film Photography to the Way I Capture the World

There is a vintage Canon A-1 film camera somewhere on its way to my apartment in New York City right now.

It should arrive tomorrow.

And I genuinely cannot remember the last time I was this excited to receive a camera.

The funny thing is that film photography isn't actually a new idea for me. I've wanted a film camera for years. The thought would disappear for a while and then somehow find its way back into my head, particularly whenever I traveled to Russia and stayed with my family.

This time, I finally did something about it.

And now I'm realizing that adding film to the way I photograph my travels isn't simply about trying another camera. Somehow, it connects where my photography is going with a part of my family's history that existed long before I ever became a photographer.

I Already Photograph the World in Two Very Different Ways

When I travel today, I usually see a destination through two cameras.

There is my Canon EOS R5, which is my primary digital camera. It allows me to capture incredible detail, people, landscapes, little moments on the street and everything else that makes me stop and reach for a camera.

And then there is my drone.

Flying a drone completely changed the way I see places because suddenly I wasn't limited to experiencing a landscape from where I happened to be standing. I could see coastlines, roads, mountains, beaches and cities from perspectives that would otherwise be impossible.

Digital photography lets me stand inside a place.

Drone photography lets me rise above it.

And now I want to add a third perspective.

Film.

Not because I think it will necessarily show me a destination from a different physical angle, but because I think it might make me experience the moment differently while I'm photographing it.

With Film, I Only Get One Version of That Moment

One of the things I love most about photography is its ability to preserve something that can never happen exactly the same way again.

A person walks through a beam of light.

A wave crashes.

A bird crosses the sky.

The sun disappears behind a mountain.

Someone laughs.

The moment happens, and then it's gone.

With my digital camera, I can photograph that moment incredibly efficiently. If something is moving quickly, I can use continuous shooting and capture frame after frame. Later, I can look through all of them and decide which fraction of that second I like best.

I love that ability. Digital photography gives me an extraordinary amount of freedom, and I don't see myself giving it up.

But film introduces almost the opposite experience.

I have 36 frames.

Thirty-six decisions.

When I press that shutter, I'm choosing that moment.

Then I advance the film.

Even if I take another photograph one second later, it isn't really the same photograph anymore. The light has shifted. Something has moved. My composition may be slightly different.

That particular combination of place, light and time existed once.

And somewhere inside the camera, there is now a physical negative carrying a record of it.

There is something about that idea that I find incredibly beautiful.

Maybe Film Was Always Somewhere in My Story

My fascination with film also has a much more personal origin.

My grandfather had a Zenit film camera.

Unfortunately, his camera didn't survive. I believe it eventually broke and was thrown away, long before I understood how much I would one day wish we still had it.

But my mom remembers developing film with him.

They didn't have a professional darkroom. They used what was essentially a tiny walk-in closet in their apartment and turned it into their own little space for developing photographs.

I have always loved that story.

And since my late teens and university years, I remember occasionally thinking that I wanted to try film photography myself.

Over approximately the last three years, that thought started appearing more frequently, especially whenever I visited my family in Russia.

This time, I finally mentioned it to my mom.

I told her that I was thinking seriously about buying a film camera.

And then she told me something that completely surprised me.

Not long ago, she had been thinking about buying one for me.

She never did because she wasn't sure whether I would actually be interested in it.

Meanwhile, I had been quietly thinking about exactly the same thing.

And apparently the story doesn't stop with my grandfather and my mom.

I only just found out that my dad was interested in film photography too.

My dad is an engineer, and I genuinely never imagined him being interested in photography when he was younger. But it turns out that when he was in school, he photographed on film, developed it and made prints with his friends.

I had no idea.

Somehow this thing that I thought was simply an artistic curiosity of mine turns out to have existed on both sides of my family.

Maybe photography really does run in the family.

I Almost Bought a Soviet Camera in Russia

Once my mom and I started talking about film, we actually tried to find a camera for me while I was still in Russia.

I wanted a Soviet camera.

A Zenit would obviously have been meaningful because that's what my grandfather had, but I was also looking at FED cameras and several other options made in the Soviet Union.

For one reason or another, though, it didn't happen.

Either I couldn't find exactly what I wanted in a condition I trusted, or the delivery timing didn't work with my flight back to New York.

Eventually, I left Russia without one.

But apparently the idea came home with me.

Then I Started Thinking About California

Back in New York, I found myself researching film cameras again.

And there was another reason I couldn't stop thinking about it.

California.

I have another California trip coming up, followed by Utah, and there are few places where I can imagine experimenting with film more.

I love California's colors. I love its coastline, its light, its roads, its landscapes and that particular feeling I get when I'm there.

Then there is Utah, with an entirely different landscape and color palette.

I already know I'll be bringing my digital camera.

I'll be bringing my drone wherever I'm legally able to fly it.

And suddenly I could imagine having this little vintage film camera in my bag too.

Three completely different tools telling the story of the same journey.

That's when I decided I was finally going to buy one.

Why I Bought a Canon A-1

Because this isn't going to be purely a decorative vintage camera or an occasional experiment, I wanted something I could actually depend on.

I'm planning to use it for travel photography, personal work and eventually some professional photography as well.

That made me hesitant to buy a nearly 50-year-old camera from a random marketplace seller and simply hope it worked.

I concentrated my search on B&H and Adorama because I wanted a reputable camera dealer, some kind of warranty and, ideally, a camera that had already been inspected and tested.

Eventually I found a refurbished Canon A-1 with a Canon FD 50mm f/1.4 lens.

It wasn't the cheapest vintage camera I could have bought.

But I ordered it.

And now it's on its way.

I Don't Want Digital Photography to Pretend to Be Film

There is another reason I wanted an actual film camera.

I've always loved the look of film.

I've tried applying film-style presets to my digital photographs once or twice, and somehow I've never really enjoyed the result.

There are beautiful presets out there. That's not the issue.

It just doesn't feel authentic to me.

Digital photography and film photography feel like two different mediums. I don't want to create a digital photograph and then make it pretend that it was captured on film.

If I'm photographing digitally, I want to embrace what digital photography allows me to create.

If I want film, I want light to actually hit a piece of film.

I want the grain to be real.

I want the limitations to be real.

I want the imperfections to be real.

I want to wait to find out what I captured.

I don't know whether anyone looking at the finished photograph will care about that distinction as much as I do.

But as the person creating it, I care.

Digital, Drone and Now Film

I don't see film replacing my digital photography.

And I certainly don't see myself leaving the drone at home because I've suddenly discovered a camera from the 1970s.

I want all three.

My digital camera gives me flexibility, precision and the freedom to capture fleeting moments quickly.

My drone allows me to show the scale and geography of a place from perspectives I could never reach on foot.

And film is going to ask me to do something different.

Slow down.

Look.

Wait.

Decide whether something is worth one of those 36 frames.

I think there is room for all three ways of seeing the world.

In fact, I think combining them might eventually make my travel stories more interesting.

The same California coastline could exist as a highly detailed digital landscape, an aerial photograph showing the road winding hundreds of feet below me, and one imperfect little frame of 35mm film taken while I was standing beside that road.

None of them has to be better than the others.

They simply remember the place differently.

Maybe There Will Be a Film Print Collection One Day

I'm also curious about where this might eventually lead with my print photography.

One of the things I would love to experiment with is creating a collection of travel photographs captured entirely on film.

The negatives can be professionally developed and scanned at high resolution, which means the photographs I make with this little Canon could eventually become physical fine-art prints themselves.

I love that full-circle idea.

A moment captured on physical film, converted into a digital file as part of my modern workflow, and eventually turned back into a physical photograph hanging on someone's wall.

Maybe California will produce the first one.

Maybe Utah.

Maybe it'll happen somewhere completely unexpected.

I have absolutely no idea yet.

This Is Only the Beginning

The funny thing is that I'm writing all of this before I've taken a single photograph with my new camera.

It hasn't even arrived.

Tomorrow I have to learn how to properly load my first roll of film. I have to get used to manual focus again. I have to accept that my ISO isn't something I can casually change from one photograph to another.

And then I'm going to have to do something that feels almost bizarre after years of digital photography:

Press the shutter...

and not look at the back of the camera.

There is nothing to look at.

I'll have to trust myself, advance the film and keep going.

Then I'll send the roll away and wait to discover what I actually created.

I can't wait.

So consider this the first entry in a new little Ann in Motion experiment.

I'll share what happens when I shoot my first roll, what I get wrong, what surprises me, what my first developed photographs look like and, eventually, what happens when this almost-50-year-old camera joins my digital camera and drone on the road.

Maybe I'll fall completely in love with film.

Maybe I'll discover that I've romanticized it for years.

Probably a little bit of both.

Either way, I'm about to find out.

Thirty-six frames at a time.

Bring a Piece of the Journey Home

While my film print collection is still only an idea waiting to be photographed, you can already explore my current collection of travel photography from around the world.

My prints are created as magazine-quality photographic artwork, designed to bring the colors, landscapes and moments I've encountered during my travels into your own space. Whether you're looking for a statement piece or a photograph that simply makes you dream about somewhere far away, each image represents a real place and a moment I experienced behind the camera.

Browse my current print collection and find a piece of the world to bring home.

And who knows? Maybe soon, a few photographs captured on 35mm film will be joining it.