When I was a kid I enjoyed shooting pictures with my camera. My first love was a Kodak camera, one that required you to thread your own film onto the spools. Then came along the Instamatic lines, which had the convenient cartridges so you couldn’t make the mistake of not threading the film correctly. This culminated in the 110 line with negatives so small that enlargements were impossible and even a 4 x 6 was grainy and people’s faces almost indistinguishable.
So it was with some sadness I marked the bankruptcy of the film icon, Kodak, which after 131 years, couldn’t pull another rabbit out of the proverbial hat in a day and age when digital cameras are everywhere, even in your phone.
That doesn’t erase some fond and not so fond memories for me in the picture taking world. I still remember when I used my first professional level SLR camera at Green 
River Community College. It didn’t even have a light meter, so you really had to guess on the settings and take a lot of photos to prevent them from all being too dark or too white (Here’s the third photo I ever shot in photojournalistic mode). Eventually we got a new camera for the college newspaper and I glommed onto it as well as the darkroom.
I spent hours and hours in the darkroom, learning all the mechanics as well as art of making photographs. I learned to use an enlarger and dodge the exposure to lighten parts of the photo and burn others to increase their exposure, making them darker. This entailed artfully moving you hand around between the light and the photo paper. Of course, you can do this all in Photoshop now.
That darkroom was something of a den of iniquity at times during my college days I admit as I lusted after a coed a time or two, and it’s also the reason why I can’t smell a thing these days. This had nothing to do with getting punched out by said coed. Rather, it was the side effect of spending too much time in a small room with noxious chemicals and no ventilation. I literally fried my olfactory nerves with developer and fixer.
All was not happiness in the film world as this time. Film was a tricky thing to work with. No matter how much you prepared for your assignment, getting a decent photo required a lot of chemistry, fresh supplies, complete darkness and no extremes in temperature. Any variable could turn a stunning roll of images into a crazy pile of sh**.
Case in point. Actor William Windom was doing a one man show at the college about war correspondent Ernie Pile. I took the assignment and got some freakingly awesome shots of him on stage. I was on a tight deadline, so I made a dead run back to the darkroom, rewinding the film as I went. When the film was developed, I excitedly pulled it off the developing spool to see the shots.
Something had gone horribly wrong. There were small lightning bolts through all the photos. There wasn’t a single one we could use. What I later discovered was that in my excitement, rewinding the spool as I ran through the cool evening air caused static electricity to form in the camera, creating a miniature lightning storm as a result.
This was not the first or last time I would have problems in the film world. There were several times when I was sure the film had caught on the sprocket that advanced the film, only to find after the fact that I had a black roll of film from a misfeed.
These mishaps couldn’t happen these days and any excuses now would fall on deaf ears. It’s a digital world now. We get instant feedback on the shots we take. And while so called “professional photographers” bitch about this age of digital photography, I love it. I don’t miss the grain or the B.S. about f-stops or pushes and why someone missed the perfect shot.
I learned from a Pulitzer Prize photographer long ago that the brains of any camera is three inches behind the viewfinder. A great photographer can take a great shot with an Instamatic. An amateur can use the most expensive set up on the planet and still get a bad shot.
In the digital world, I know I got a good shot within a moment. If I don’t like it, I can shoot it again and again. I don’t have to waste rolls of film to get the one shot I like. And I don’t have to stop all the action while I change rolls of film. I can shoot like a madman, never cursing the fact that while I was reloading, I lost the magnificent lighting that was there only a moment ago or the little creature I was shooting had scampered off, not listening to my pleadings to stay still just one moment more.
I am not one to mourn the death of film. It was a long time coming and if you think about it, 131 years of catering to a single technological advance is pretty amazing. Audio technologies never enjoyed such long runs. Cassettes killed off LPs after 40 years, CDs killed off cassettes after 20 and now flash technology is killing of CDs.
Sorry Kodak, but I won’t be at the funeral. I won’t be one of the mourners at your demise. I am pretty thrilled with the digital world, although I do miss my non-film adventures in the darkroom.
Out on the Treasure Coast, seeing what develops today!
– Robb