Hi all :)

I hope to introduce some of you to the wonderful world of film photography, whether you're into the lomo and holga look of dreamy soft other worldly images, or high speed night street photography, fashion photography, art nudes, or you're into highly detailed landscapes, or even weddings, or for any other purpose, I am sure film will give you more than you could dream of in photography, and that it will ignite, drive and inspire your creativity and passion for photography just that bit more.

So let's start off with something interesting shall we:

Forget everything you've been told about film, not only is it alive and well, but it is the medium of choice for virtually limitless creative freedom and expression. The above image on the left was shot, on film in 1909 by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. The image on the right on the other hand was shot by a flickr user (right click the image open in new tab) with a pinhole version of a Holga camera.

The two bottom images were shot by me, on medium format film, one just the a few days ago in Melbourne city (Saturday the 26th of Feb 2011) and one last year.

Obviously since I am showing you these images on the internet, film can be digitised, so it is certainly not left behind in the times. There is so much choice between films and cameras, from amazingly simple toy-like cameras to huge complex beasts, to cameras with two lenses where you look down through the top. Film is indivualistic and stylistic, it has soul, rather than taking a part in the clone wars where everyone has all the same stuff. It makes socialising with other photographers into film that much more exciting as you each share and bring something new and different to each other.

Film is a bottomless pit of creativity, expression, and of course discovery of so many wonders you'd never thought possible in photography.

You know when you get images that either have white sky with no detail? Or white detail-less objects? Either that or dark faces and almost black foreground? With film you can have both parts of your image looking great with a single click, no need for messy HDR and stuffing around.

You ever wanted massively detailed panoramic landscapes? A fussy landscape photographer using film may pull out 244 megapixel (well it's not megapixels on film.. till you digitise it) beautifully rich saturated and detailed image (and I'm talking rich detail, not the horrid kind of look of many digital cameras when you look at the image a bit closer, but simply perfectly sharp) with a single click, no HDR and no panoramic stitching and trying to cover errors up.

Eg, see the below picture, which is only a fraction of what you may achieve in terms of detail level, depending upon what you want to achieve and how you shoot.

To sum it up the benefits:

• Flexibility
• Range of choice
• Quality
• It's different
• Individuality
• Hand-crafted Photography
• Price
  • Just the other week, I picked up 2x large format 4x5" rail cameras, enlarger, and sheet processing tank for $100
  • I've seen medium format kits, ready to start shooting with go for $200-$300

This will do for the introduction :) I'll leave you with a few images made with film below by some flickr members, be sure to click on any other part of this article that you'd like to read, oh and like & comment, and see the services tab or this facebook page if you need inexpensive film processing (don't forget to like!) - http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Melbourne-Film-Processing-Supplies/192853034081634

The following are by Sebastiao Salgado (just google it)