The last two nights I’ve used my Pen­tax SP500 (film SLR) cam­era, and I’m more than a tad annoyed at myself. Less so tonight than yes­ter­day, but there we go — either way, it’s not good. I hadn’t really used the film cam­era since about Jan­u­ary this year (I know, it’s appalling; more as a result of time than desire, how­ever, as I haven’t had many planned oppor­tu­ni­ties for good pho­tog­ra­phy ses­sions), so this was the first time I’d really used it since get­ting the dig­i­tal toy (because, really, despite the opti­cal zoom, that’s all it is).

It’s cre­ated three major prob­lems, in terms of my pho­tog­ra­phy skills. Firstly, I’m snap-happy. It’s ridicu­lous (ridicu­lously expen­sive!). Last night I went through a roll of 35mm film in one per­for­mance (didn’t cover the whole show, either), and tonight, when I was try­ing to cover the bit I missed, I went through another roll in under 15 min­utes. Yeeaaahhhh.

That’s not so much a tech­ni­cal issue as a styl­is­tic one, how­ever. Far more impor­tantly, I quite lit­er­ally for­got that adjustable F-stop rings existed. Need­less to say, when I remem­bered, I kicked myself rather hard. Stupidity++.

I’d also for­got­ten to use the spot meter until about halfway through the night (and, hon­estly, it’s pretty use­ful to have! Com­plain all you want about how they’re inac­cu­rate and don’t tru­ely mea­sure what they’re see­ing, but it’s a great ref­er­ence point — I’m not say­ing fol­low them blindly, but they cer­tainly help), which prob­a­bly resulted in a whole num­ber of too-dark pho­tos (or too-unneccesarily-blurry pho­tos — the shut­ter was set to quar­ter sec­ond expo­sure for most of the night!)

Speak­ing of enor­mous expo­sures, I’m really lov­ing hav­ing a CHUNKY cam­era to hold again. Don’t get me wrong, I love my tiny Optio (it fits in my pocket per­fectly), but not for night pho­tog­ra­phy sans flash. It’s just too small to hold steadily, unless you’re braced against some­thing incred­i­bly solid, or you get lucky with the sub­ject mov­ing as your hand does (cool focused sub­ject with blurred back­ground — noth­ing to do with depth of field, just motion). The SP500, how­ever… drool. I haven’t had time to get these two rolls put in for devel­op­ing yet, but it just feels good to use. Ridicu­lously good. It’s like mov­ing from a dis­pos­able cam­era, almost (a GOOD dis­pos­able cam­era, but still).

This is why when I got the dig­i­tal I tried to con­vince myself I’d never use it for any­thing seri­ous — because I fully recog­nise it’s a dinky lit­tle toy. It exists to be taken nearly every­where, to cap­ture any­thing, just for kicks. Like this police car, for example…