I found my old 35mm camera again this morning. I haven’t used it since college—but it’s been lovingly packed up and carried with my wherever I move, even if it’s to just sit on a shelf or in the back of my closet.
I have two digital cameras which see far more use, but nothing will ever make me give up that old camera.
Two reasons: it was my first real, grown-up, utterly manual camera—everything this camera did was my choice, good or bad—and my grandfather gave me this camera as a gift before I left for college. It was a requirement that all incoming photo students own a 35mm camera with an internal light meter. The camera was given to him several years before, but he had another which he preferred.
The camera itself is a Rolleiflex and is a workhorse of German engineering that will quite likely outlive the 35mm film format. I keep it in a mismatched leather case that doesn’t quite close because the front of the original fell off during a trip to the zoo and dropped into the wolf enclosure. I remember there being a moment where I was watching the case fall and thought, “I could still grab it…but then I might drop the camera…” The wolves could have the case. I spent a majority of my time in college with this camera to my eye—even without it I saw the world through a frame: how would I photograph this? What aperture? What speed? Each and every moment could be a perfect image just waiting to be caught.
Time seems different when you can press it into film. There is something frozen about a photograph, something still and quiet. You have to slow down if you want to look at old albums or slides—you have to specifically seek them out. It’s the same to taking pictures on film—you have to move deliberately to some extent. If there’s anything to call our lives in 2008, slow is far from it, and stopping everything to try a find your family’s old pictures isn’t as appealing. Especially not when digital cameras enable us to have years of images and memories just a few mouse clicks away.
Does that mean that we have any desire to get rid of these old photographs, negatives, or slides? Not at all, just like I would never even dream of getting rid of my grandfather’s camera. These are history—more than that, these are our histories. One of a kind and utterly priceless.
When was the last time you looked through your stacks of old photographs? Many of us even have inherited drawers or boxes filled from our parents, and their parents as well. All filled with small windows into the past that we might not have ever seen. Wouldn’t you like to?
This is where ScanDigital is ready to help you.