I have been a photographer now for nearly eight years, and in June of 2024, I took the plunge to try shooting film. After many days of photographing film for fun, my first opportunity came along to shoot some Kodak Gold on an engagement photoshoot. I knew I could do this, but I needed backup: my trusted digital camera, the Nikon d850. I used my digital as the play-it-safe camera. I duplicated everything I shot on this, on my Nikon F3 with the roll of Kodak Gold 200 inside.

The first I noticed was how challenging it was to have to manually expose and manually focus for every photo. I had to explain this to Luca and Sophie beforehand, and they were more than understanding of this. I had to count down 3,2,1 for each photo. You need to make them count when you only have 36 exposures on a roll. I think that is what makes the challenge fun? You also learn to appreciate every photo.

Sophie and Luca were joined by Gatsby, their little dog. He made a great addition to the photos and nearly stole the show. We all met at Valley of the Rocks in north Devon. It was a brilliant location to be shooting film and an amazing time of year. The earthy colours and the sunset at the end helped everything fall into place. Displayed here are some of, and my favourite photos taken on a single roll of Kodak Gold film. On my next engagement photoshoot I will dig out the Mamiya 645 ( another blog idea )

As you will see in the second photograph I had an amazing light leak, caused by low and direct sunlight bouncing around inside of my film camera and leaking through hitting the film inside. Thats the thing with film, you can’t plan the random outcomes and finishes of a photo.