My renewed interest in film photography has revealed an interesting paradox.
I have been shooting 35mm pictures for four decades now. Of course the journey began in the film era with a Minolta X-700, which I purchased to take better pictures of my kids. From then until I purchased my first digital camera in 2002, I just took pictures for my own enjoyment, and to capture important events and memories. For years, the X-700 came with me everywhere, including a mountain marathon that I ran up in Breckenridge years ago. I don’t know how many rolls of film I shot, but I imagine maybe a couple hundred rolls of 36 in the twenty years leading up to the digital era.
In the early 2000s I got wind of a new photography phenomenon called micro-stock, and I dove in with both feet capturing images to upload for commercial licensing. From that point on my purpose for photography changed from enjoying the photography lifestyle experience, to capturing images for stock. Photography changed from enjoyment to work, and work at it I did. Since then I have uploaded some 15,000 images on various agencies. You can look at my stock page to see the details, if you like.
A couple years ago I found an old Canon AE-1 at a thrift shop, and bought it just to add to my collection of antique cameras. Sometime I should line them all up and take a picture of them for a post. As I sat in my truck staring at it, I opened the battery door and found it to be in good working condition inside. I was parked right next to a Walgreens, so I walked across the street for a battery The shutter seemed to work properly and I began to wonder if I could actually get it to work. I walked across the street again and picked up a roll of Kodak Gold.
Eventually I got my film and prints back from the lab, and the old camera had worked perfectly. I had forgotten the joy of actually receiving a packet of prints to look at. Since then I have embarked upon a journey into my photographic roots in a quest to recover the enjoyment that was lost when I began to shoot for the images rather than the fun of it.
But that’s not the paradox I’m speaking about today. Since I purchased that AE-1, I have also added a Canon A-1, and a Canon EOS-7 to my collection, which I find myself carrying around more and more often. The paradox is in the experience vs the number of images captured. When I take my modern mirrorless Canon R7 out, I find myself often shooting hundreds, if not thousands of pictures in an outing.
In fact when I captured the image of Snow the grizzly bear and her cubs (above) in Yellowstone, I captured over 1500 images in less than an hour. in contrast, I captured this sublime image of a chipmunk with one snap of the shutter on my EOS-7, loaded with Kodak 400 Ultramax film.
And therein lies the paradox. When I carry a film camera I’m enjoying every minute of the process, the hike, the outing, the event, or whatever the day happens to bring. When I’m shooting film, I’m surprised if I shoot one roll of 36 frames. When I’m carrying the R7, I feel like I’m working and I shoot hundreds of pictures without even noticing the event or hike I have come out to experience.
For me anyway, with film photography I remember the experience and finding something worth shooting is rare. With digital, enjoyment of the experience is rare, while captured images are plentiful and mostly unremarkable. Of the fifteen hundred grizzly bear captures, I may have bothered to process only about a dozen.
The paradox is how the photography experience can completely change based on the camera equipment you are carrying.
With that in mind, I plan to carry a film camera a lot more often in 2025. Now obviously the old film cameras don’t have anywhere near the capability of my Canon R7, so when I’m on a working adventure where the goal is the captured image, my mirrorless digital body with a 400mm L lens will still be my equipment of choice.
However, when my goal is to get out and enjoy a morning in the sun, perhaps my choice will be my autofocus Canon EOS-7, or maybe even my old A-1 loaded with a roll of Ilford Delta 400 with a yellow filter attached to the old manual focus 28-135 lens.
If you are wanting to get into photography, or would like to experience my photographic journey through two decades of digital imaging, please consider purchasing my book, Two Decades of Digital Photography, or my novel Spirit of the Wolf! Prints and gift items are available on my prints website.
Steven W. Krull is a renowned photographer and author who has been photographing and writing of the beauty and wildlife of the Colorado Rocky Mountains for over two decades. Please visit his website at S.W. Krull Imaging to view his work, including thousands of prints for sale, stock images for commercial use, and his library of published books.
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Colorado Photographer / Author / Wildlife Advocate | Steven W. Krull 