does anyone still use 35mm film

[guest311]

just wondering if anyone still uses 35mm film ?
I've got two cameras, a Minolta and a Pentax, together with spare lenses, and before they head to the charity shop, I wondered if anyone on the forum would have a use for them ?
alan

[austinbob]

My local charity shop wouldn't take my old 35mm camera as there was 'no demand', so I still have it. I'm sure there must be some film enthusiasts out there. How about selling on eBay. Some cameras are collectables.

[broadsword]

I still use film occasionally, got a real bargain  , a Mamiya 35mm slr.
40 years old and never used, cost me £12 from a charity on Ebay.
Boots still sell film.

[Newportnobby]

Boots still sell film.

I tried Jessops but they didn't have any. They said "Have you tried Boots?" to which I replied "Yeah - but they wouldn't fit in the camera"
Baddum tish!

(Soz )

[daffy]

Like you Alan I have some old Pentax cameras, lenses, and a leather case for one of them. They were my late father-in-laws. I have often looked at selling them but prices are very low, and getting lower it seems. A couple of local charity shops showed little interest in taking them, so I guess I'm waiting for the day, like with old vinyl albums, that a nostalgia fad kicks in. A long wait then. So they sit in the bottom of a wardrobe, lamenting the day when they were all the rage.

I like the ease of digital, but there is nothing like a film-format camera to take a quality picture, particularly a landscape. And I owned the same film camera for decades, whereas until recently it was rather necessary to keep upgrading to the latest resolution digital camera to get rid of the dots. (Yeah, I know, they're called pixels, before anybody mentions it.)

[Bob G]

I got a reasonable price for the 28-105 and 100-300 lenses of my old 35mm camera (Minolta body and lenses), as well as the flash unit, but the body was worth nothing at all.
Sold them on EBay last year. Or was it the year before. Nice to get rid.

[austinbob]

Like you Alan I have some old Pentax cameras, lenses, and a leather case for one of them. They were my late father-in-laws. I have often looked at selling them but prices are very low, and getting lower it seems. A couple of local charity shops showed little interest in taking them, so I guess I'm waiting for the day, like with old vinyl albums, that a nostalgia fad kicks in. A long wait then. So they sit in the bottom of a wardrobe, lamenting the day when they were all the rage.

I like the ease of digital, but there is nothing like a film-format camera to take a quality picture, particularly a landscape. And I owned the same film camera for decades, whereas until recently it was rather necessary to keep upgrading to the latest resolution digital camera to get rid of the dots. (Yeah, I know, they're called pixels, before anybody mentions it.)

IMHO Daffy the time when you could say digital images suffer from 'dots' has long passed. You just can't see the pixels on modern reasonable quality cameras at even fairly high magnification - say equivalent to 20 x 16 prints.
Its very difficult to get a good 20x16 from 35mm. The pixels are replaced by grain (unless you use fine grain but slow film) and dust spots generated during the development and enlargement process.
Digital is here to stay methinks.

[Yet_Another]

I sold all my Minolta kit on ebay a couple of years ago, and it was worth the effort. The lenses still fit Sony Alpha SLRs (or did until recently, haven't checked).

[Papyrus]

I haven't used film for several years, but curiously I have less interest in photography now even though I take more photos than I did then. I have to say that, when digital cameras started to appear, the quality was so poor I never thought they would catch on, let alone eclipse film photography entirely. The quality of detail you can now get even on a phone camera (Samsung S8 for example) beats anything a 35mm camera could do. So, I have a Pentax sitting unused, and my wife has a Nikon F, bought in Hong Kong in the 70s, and which I'm told is one of the few that is collectable.

Seems a wicked shame just to bin them...

Cheers,

Chris

[daffy]

Yes Bob, it's here to stay, as my Canon 16meg slr testifies. As I said, until recently (okay, not that recently, but now I'm retired everything past seems just last year ), previous digital cameras I owned were never up to the job in the detail stakes, with dots dominating.

Funny things is, I still like looking at my albums full of film prints, but rarely get the same joy swiping through the hundreds of digital images I've taken. Maybe it's a nostalgia thing.

[austinbob]

Yes Bob, it's here to stay, as my Canon 16meg slr testifies. As I said, until recently (okay, not that recently, but now I'm retired everything past seems just last year ), previous digital cameras I owned were never up to the job in the detail stakes, with dots dominating.

Funny things is, I still like looking at my albums full of film prints, but rarely get the same joy swiping through the hundreds of digital images I've taken. Maybe it's a nostalgia thing.

Yes. Its nice looking at prints. Images on a screen don't seem to have the same appeal.
Similar to the difference between an eBook and a real book.
I had one of the original Olympus digital cameras with, wait for it, almost a whole megapixel resolution. Now that DID have dots and cost more than current medium range dslr's
 

[joe cassidy]

Old cameras are probably worth more as decorative objects than working cameras, like old telephones.

A few years ago an East German camera called Lomo developed a cult following here in France (the camera equivalent of a Trabant) but that didn't last long.

Best regards,


Joe

[javlinfaw7]

Pentax k mount lenses still fit current pentax digital cameras , if the lenses are auto lenses they have full function others can be used manually .I continued to use my Pentax film cameras up to the point local processing became hit or miss before going digital

[Intercity]

I still have all my old film cameras, first SLR was an old Minolta, it was totally manual, no electronic help at all, my light meter was a separate device also manual, the one thing it did teach was how to set up for the shot and to take into account how fast your object was moving, lighting, depth of field, composition, a one click and several weeks of waiting (developing time) made you pay attention.

Digital cameras these days take very good picture but they make a lot of bad photographers think they are good, after all if they don't use manual settings its just a big expensive point and shoot, rapid click for multiple shots (fix anything wrong on the computer afterwards)

But alas no I don't use film or slides anymore, no more choosing black and white or colour, or deciding what Film speed to buy.

[Bealman]

Yeah, I did all that back in the early seventies with a Praktica and a separate light meter. I bought an Olympus OM10 in 1982 which I still consider to be the best camera I owned.

When I did a 5 week's stint teaching Physics at my old place of employ in 2015, there were still kids from art classes wandering around the school taking "arty" pics on black & white film which they would develop themselves in a darkroom in the art block.