Back to black…and white

2 Mar

I’ve been enjoying my first experience of DSLR photography for over a year now with my 2005 Canon 5D Classic but I wanted to try film photography again. I remember getting an SLR camera when I was 18 and loving using it at college in Devon. I’m pretty sure it was a Praktica of some kind which was pretty much ridiculed at the time by all the Canon and Nikon owners in my year!

So when I saw a nice looking Praktica BCA Electronic on eBay I thought why not! At £8.95 it came with a 28mm Prakticar 2.8 lens and although these late 80s East German cameras are a bit unreliable I seem to have bagged a good one. I did have to clean up the battery terminals but with a little effort it sprung back into life.

The lens also needed some work as it had a touch of fungus but the mechanical parts were all working really smoothly.

So what about using film in 2023? How does it work? Where do you buy it? How do you get it developed?

I found most of the answers online of course but also at Mr Cad in Victoria, London. Probably the oldest film camera store in the UK and bristling with used cameras and lenses all now being adopted by a new wave of young SLR enthusiasts.

I decided after looking at the costs to start this new journey with Black and White and the best value purchase was 4 x 36 rolls of Kentmere 400 by Harman at £22.

So where to get film developed in 2023 and at what cost? I popped into Asda, Boots and London Camera Exchange in my home town of Gloucester and was offered a pricey, send away, third party option at up to £18 for 36 scans. so a quick google and I found Jacks Lab in Bristol which had a nice feel about it as a small, quirky, business run by real film enthusiasts.

I sent off my first roll of film in 40 years and eagerly awaited the results. A week later I was relieved to see that the camera worked pretty well.