- A gray cat slinks past a wooden house. There’s something a little intimidating attempting to describe.
Recently, I decided to give a second life to a vintage Zenit 12 XP film camera that had been given to my son by my father-in-law. It was one of those cameras that, despite having spent quite some time sitting unused, still had enough character to make me curious about putting it back to work.
I had some doubts about the condition and cleanliness of the lens, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to use an Ilford Delta 400 black-and-white film roll that I had loaded into the camera some time ago. The idea was quite simple: finish the roll and, at the same time, use it as a kind of test. If there were any spots, fungus or other marks on the lens, they might eventually become visible on the photographs after development.
But there was another reason to finish that roll. I decided to use the opportunity for a small scouting trip, looking for new locations, perspectives and compositions. In this way, I could combine two things that interested me: testing the camera and lens while also exploring new photographic possibilities.
It seemed like a simple plan.
Until it was time to rewind the film.
When I tried to rewind it, I failed to properly identify the mechanism that releases the film advance. Without fully understanding what was happening, I continued trying to rewind the roll. Then I heard something that no film photographer ever wants to hear: the film being damaged by the teeth of the camera’s transport mechanism.
The roll was ruined.
After the initial frustration and some disbelief at how I had managed to make such a basic mistake I decided not to give up. I bought a new Kentmere Pan 400 black-and-white film and decided to start again.
The following week, I returned to the same locations where I had photographed with the previous roll. This time, I wanted not only to revisit some of the compositions but also to explore different perspectives and see what else those places could offer.
Everything seemed to be going well.
Until it was time to finish the roll again.
That was when I discovered the second problem.
Looking at the camera, I realised that I had left the ISO setting at a value far below the ISO 400 of the film I was using. In other words, the entire session had been shot with an ISO setting that was completely inappropriate for the film loaded in the camera.
Despite my doubts, I decided to send the roll to Colorfoto for development. Perhaps there was still some way of recovering the images.
A few days later, I received a call from the technician responsible for developing the film. He explained that it was possible to develop the roll, but given the conditions under which it had been exposed, there was a strong possibility that the photographs would have significant exposure problems and that many of them would turn out far too dark.
At that point, I realised that going ahead with the development might not do justice to the photographs I had tried to create.
So I decided to let it go.
Two rolls of film. Two photographic outings. And, in the end, not a single usable photograph.
It is difficult not to feel frustrated by a result like this. After all, shooting film means accepting a certain degree of uncertainty. There is no LCD screen to look at after each shot, no immediate histogram, and no opportunity to check your exposure, change a setting and take the photograph again. Every frame is, in a way, a small gamble.
But perhaps that uncertainty is precisely what makes analogue photography so fascinating.
Those two rolls became an unexpected lesson. They reminded me that shooting film requires attention to the smallest details: checking the ISO, understanding how the camera works, making sure the film is properly loaded and, above all, never assuming that everything is working simply because the shutter fires.
With digital photography, a mistake can often be corrected on the very next frame.
With film, the mistake can stay with you for the entire roll.
And, in this case, it stayed with me for two.
Perhaps the real photographs from those two rolls are not the images that were never developed, but the story that remained behind them.
