My First Rolls of Film (and Everything I Got Wrong)

I didn’t start shooting film because I knew what I was doing. I started because I wanted to slow down.

The first roll of 35mm I ever shot was Kodak 400, taken on a trip to Canada. At the time, I was excited but completely inexperienced. I took photos without really understanding light, exposure, or even how fragile film could be. When the trip ended, I put the roll back in its little plastic tube and forgot about it entirely, for almost a year.

By the time I finally got it developed, it had been through airport scanners four times, exposed to light, and generally mistreated. I remember bracing myself for the results. Out of 36 frames, I got two very bad photos. Most of the roll was unusable. And yet, I didn’t feel discouraged. Seeing those images, however flawed, taught me more than I expected.

They showed me what not to do, and that felt like a starting point rather than a failure.

The camera itself has its own story. I bought it at a car boot sale for £5. A Minolta Dynax 3000i. It’s solid, slightly clunky, and definitely not something you slip into a pocket. Carrying it around all day is a commitment. But for a fiver, it shoots surprisingly well. There’s something grounding about using a camera that doesn’t try to do everything for you.

The second roll felt like a turning point. I shot Fujifilm 400 while in Dublin, and when I got the photos back, I could immediately see the difference. They weren’t perfect, but they were intentional. The colours felt closer to what I remembered, and the moments felt more considered. It finally felt like the camera and I were working together instead of against each other.

That said, I only got 26 photos back from the roll of 36. I’m fairly sure the missing frames are the result of me panicking while trying to rewind the film and not quite knowing how to do it properly. Why film cameras don’t come with clearer instructions is still a mystery to me. Film is honest. It records mistakes just as faithfully as successes.

So far, I’ve found that I definitely prefer Fujifilm over Kodak, at least for how I like to shoot and the tones I’m drawn to. Next, I’d love to try black and white, something even slower and more deliberate.

Shooting film has quietly changed the way I look at things. It’s made me more patient, more observant, and more comfortable with not getting everything right the first time. In a way, it feels connected to how I think about space, design, and experience, but it also exists outside of that. It’s just something I’m learning, one imperfect roll at a time.