You know what’s the best thing about stuff from the olden times? They don’t have dependencies.

Iconic view of The Stilts at Batangas taken sometime in early November 2017

Well, fine, they do, but not as many as the new tech. A feature of old stuff is that they’re mostly mechanical. They’re relatively easier to fix than their modern counterparts, and they depend more on physics and actual, tangible hardware instead of tiny chips and a bunch of 0s and 1s. (Disclaimer: I don’t actually know how to fix a camera.)

I have never felt this much appreciation for film cameras until 2019. I started shooting film in 2016, and mostly until 2017, when I started on a day job and my life pretty much revolved around it. Weekdays in the office and weekends at the province, recuperating.

A hotel in Baguio, November 2017

What I mean, is that I wasn’t able to use my camera as much as I liked to. I brought it with me on some local trips, and then to the US when we went for vacation that year.

By that time, I had also bought a new film camera. I had wanted to try out a rangefinder for a long time, and I’ve finally got hold of a Canonet QL17 GIII. Photo geek me took both cameras to the US, and I used the Canonet more than the one I originally had: a Pentax Spotmatic SPII SLR. That’s the one I used for these shots. So, in the end, we got back to the Philippines with this roll unfinished.

Residential sidewalk over at Eagle Rock, LA. December 2017

As you would expect, the camera rested at home for a long, long time after that. There were many times I wanted to bring it out, but old cameras aren’t exactly as portable as new digital compacts and smartphones. They’re bulky and heavy. Like, really heavy, compared to anything you’d typically bring with you.

So, I forgot about it. It sat on my shelf, inside a “dry box” (which is just an airtight container with some silica gels). Untouched and only there to vaguely remind me that I still have cameras to do photography with.

Until one day in 2019. My family and I were going out to have lunch for my mother’s birthday. I finally felt the urge to use a proper camera again. You know, to document important events. (Smartphones are infinitely convenient and cameras are now really good on them, but there’s still a large gap from actual cameras, and no, not only in quality.) So I planned to bring my good old Fujifilm X100S. Only,I think I forgot to charge the batteries, or that I had a vague memory that it still has some juice from the month before. The day came, and I used it before leaving the house, wanting to get some fun shots of mother prepping to go out.

Only, it died on me. I took out my spare battery and the camera still wasn’t working. Problems with the battery or with the camera itself, I wasn’t sure, and my dad was already calling me out the house.

And what do I see, next? That’s right. The film camera. It was just sitting there. I was positive I didn’t have a roll anymore, but it was easy enough to reach over and check. Just in case. AND THERE IT WAS. The roll still loaded inside the camera, with around 10 shots left.

And here’s why I was raving about the mechanical*-ity* of old cameras. They work without batteries. THEY WORK WITHOUT BATTERIES. Some old cameras need batteries, but mine doesn’t. It has a lightmeter, but it’s fully functional without one, and I’ve never even used it. (I’m a fan of full manual shooting. You’re going vintage already, anyway, so why not just go the full stretch and do all the lightmeter-ing yourself?)

Now, I had no clue what the roll inside was. I mean, I couldn’t really open the back and take a peek. My camera has the marker on ISO 100, though, so I trusted my 2017 self to be religious in re-setting it everytime I load a new roll. And so I shot it on ISO 100.

The mother, on her birthday celebration. February 2019.

The mother, still. With a birthday ice cream from Charito by Bag of Beans, a restaurant in Tagaytay.

The photos came out great! At least for me, anyway. It turned out that the roll inside was an expired Kodak Ultima 100, and I vaguely remembered that in 2017 (or in college in general), I was a big cheapskate and loved shooting with really cheap film. So, it was already expired, and then I’ve left it for one more year inside the camera.

Look at the faded effect from the photos in 2017 and from the photos in 2019. It’s noticeably more pronounced in 2019, and I find that really interesting! It gave off a really nice effect, which is easy to duplicate in Lightroom. But this here is the real thing. Legit filters, man.

I ended up having nice and memorable photos of this day!

So, the conclusion? Shoot film. It’s great. It’s fun. It’s reliable and low-maintenance. Most of the time. You get legit, non-VSCO filters. It’s expensive. No, that’s not great, but you get infinitely more meaningful photos, anyway. Trust me. because I’ve been plagued by all this “shoot digital vs film” thing, which is another big, personal topic altogether.