Combining Old and New Hobbies

Combining Old and New Hobbies

I’ve been backpacking and hiking for as long as I can remember. In the “old days” I would use a bulky digital camera to take pictures of the mountains, trees, and streams. As phones I got better I ditched the camera and just used my phone. Part of it was the ditching the weight and part of it was the convenience of having a camera in my pocket that took pictures that were “good enough”. There were a few years where photography on the hikes was a very important part of it for me.

I feel like I lost something in that transiiton from using the camera to using the phone. There was less thought put into individual pictures. I would still think about framing and subject, but would settle and shots that “wow” me and others were fewer and fewer. It was just more pictures from another trip to post online.

One part of that I think is that the phone put more distance between me and the act of taking a picture. I would be taking out the device I used every day for 10000 things, staring at the screen, taking a picture, and then putting it back in my pocket.

Another aspect of this is that with the phone, there is no scarcity. The amnount of pictures you can take is functionally infinite. At least with the older digial cameras I had to be a little more careful. The memory cards were smaller and more expensive. I at least had to consider the space I had left on the card.

Enter film photography! I’ve had an interest in more analog formats of things for a while now, and film photography seemed like a fun way to get back into photography. I started by looking at some cameras online, and then remembered that my dad probably still had the camera he used when I was growing up. And he did! A Minolta X-700 with a 50mm lens.

All the pictures in this post were taken with that camera on a hiking trip. I’ve really been enjoying it so far. It’s been a great way to rengage with nature, my surroundings, and taking photos. It’s also been very fun to learn how the camera works and how to take good pictures with it. I hope to keep using it more and more on my trips. I will probably work on some kind of photo album viewer for this site to show off the pictures I take with it.

All photos were taken on Fuji 200 film.