I’ve always appreciated the aesthetics of analogue media and having played around with a Sony A6500 for my usual photos I thought it would be cool to try taking some photos on film! I was most definitely inspired by my cousin and a few fellow film photographers at church. And besides- I’ve always wanted to learn about the various intricacies when it comes to taking photos, like shutter speed & ISO. I just needed an excuse to buy one. 😉

I recently learnt that the ISO is set by the film itself, but you can over or under-compensate by manually adjusting the ASA/ISO setting on the camera a bit over or under the rated ISO of the film you’re using.

New Equipment: Yashica Electro 35 FC

So I got this off eBay for around AU$140. It looked cool, didn’t break the bank and I always wondered how these cameras focused, and what is a ‘rangefinder’. I was even thinking of whether this thing needed batteries to operate, but the cool thing with analogue and manual things is that you don’t need batteries to take photos!

This one came with a detached front glass where the rangefinder worked, so I had to spend hours trying to get the top casing off, which was no easy feat by the way. I almost gave up before soliciting some help from my brother to pull the top part open. Unfortunately, I mangled the spring that resets the exposure counter so it would have to rely on the rewinding of the film to count backwards.

But on my first roll, I had it stuck on the last exposure (count 36) because I didn’t know how it rewound.

It seems to be serving me well so far, I think I just have to learn to get the film in properly and we should be off to the races!

I am low-key blown away by the rangefinding technology there, it’s just so cool.