When I was in college, I took a photography class and used a Canon AE-1. It was my first camera love. After that I was sold on Canons. In this class I had the opportunity to take my own pictures, develop my own film, enlarge my negatives, expose on photo paper & develop my own prints. It was a process that I fell in love with. It was hands down my most favorite class during my college career. Because of that class, I’ve always wanted to construct my own darkroom at home. Hopefully someday I’ll be able to do so! I’m sad to report that I don’t have that camera anymore and really hope to get my hands on another AE-1 sometime down the road.

Not that long ago my mom came across a Pentax K1000 at a garage sale & bought it for me. It sat on my shelf for a few months until one day I picked it up and decided to test it out. I had a few rolls of 35mm film laying around the house, so I loaded a roll & set to out master this camera. I quickly discovered that the internal light meter doesn’t function correctly, so I had to rely on instincts to make adjustments – which is fine because I shoot in manual on my DSLR, so I’m used to that part. When I finished shooting my test roll I went to rewind the film – but that function doesn’t appear to work on the camera either, oops! I had to go into a completely dark room, unload the film & hand roll it back into the spool. By this point I’m losing all hope that this test roll is even going to turn out – I didn’t even know if the camera even worked!

After waiting almost a week for my film to be developed (because no one in town does this anymore!) I got my prints back – and boy was I surprised. Every single photo turned out! I’m in love! My only regret is that I took so many boring pictures (my food, my beer, Luke reading the newspaper, the neighbors house and salsa at a restaurant, the dog…). Had I known the pictures were actually going to turn out – I would’ve chosen some better subjects!

I’m super excited that the camera works and I’ve even shot one more roll of film – it just needs to be dropped off and developed now. I can’t wait to use this camera more frequently. I still love my DSLR and use it quite a bit – but there really isn’t anything else like an old fashioned film camera.