What to do if you inherit a 35mm film camera
Many of us are likely to remember a father or more rarely, a mother, exhorting us to stand stock still in front of a beautiful mountain in the Lake District, or maybe we have fairgound photos from Whitley Bay or the beach at Marsden in the family album. If there’s a talented amateur photographer in the family, you might discover a box of old camera stuff not being used. If you find a stash in an attic, or better still, are given an old 35mm film camera, this is what to do.
1. Ask the owner: obvious really. They’ll be able to tell you how to switch it on, change the battery, load the film, all the essential whatnot. If the previous owner has lost all interest, or is sadly no longer with us, try working through the points below.
2. Identify your camera.
Chances are, you’ll be holding a single lens reflex (SLR) camera in your hands, lucky you! It’ll be a Nikon, Canon or less likely, a Pentax. These come in broadly two types, older metal bodied cameras with few (if any) automatic features, or more modern plastic bodied lighter weight machines with several modes, and very similar looking to modern day digital SLRs.
There are 2 basic types of 35mm film camera: rangefinders and single lens reflex cameras (SLRs). If your camera is a rangefinder, it will have a flat top and probably a Russian name. I’ll write about these another time, but if you’ve got an old one lying around, roughly the same rehabilitation tips still apply.
3. If your camera looks similar to the one above, it’ll need a battery. The battery slot is in the bottom of the hand grip. They’re usually of the double type, and are sold in most camera shops and places like Maplins and Dixons, as well as shops on the internets. Take the old battery out: it’ll have a reference number on it.
4. Don’t open the back of the camera if there is a film in it! You can tell by looking through the long thin window on the back. If you can see some colour and lettering through the window, that’s the side of the film canister, and you’re in luck! It is always a great pleasure to finish a film belonging to someone else: you might even be able to retrieve the last photographs someone has taken before they died, so it can be a privilege as well as a pleasure.
5. While you’re waiting to get the battery replaced, give the whole thing a good clean. Most people smoked, or heated houses with coal fires, especially here up north, but in any case, there’ll be dust. You can use a weak washing-up solution and a soft cloth to clean up the body. The lens might have a filter attached: if it does, you can unscrew and clean both sides of the filter and the glass of the lens with some glass cleaner, preferably the type used to clean spectacles, but any will do.
6. When the battery arrives, load and switch on! A Canon on-off switch is hidden in on the dial. On a Nikon, it’s on a ring around the shutter button. If all is well, a small box on the top of the camera will illuminate, showing how many frames are left, and the f-stop and shutter speed. Hooray!
7. If there’s no film in the camera for you to finish, buy some from me, or from 7dayshop, or your local camera shop, and load. Open the back by pushing the small button on the side upwards, and put the film canister in the side facing the opening - it will only fit one way in any case. Draw out a short length of the film and pull across the black shutter window, resting the end at the other side. Try not to touch any of the matt-painted shutter parts inside the camera whilst loading the film. Close the back: you will hear the film being drawn onto the spool inside the camera, and the number counter will register 24 or 36, depending on what size film you purchased.
8. If you don’t hear it whirring, or the number doesn’t register on the window, open the back and try again. You can always draw film back into the canister by winding the protruding bit at the top of the cylinder. Bear in mind though, that any film that’s been drawn out of the canister has been exposed, so try to use just what you’ll need to load, which will be the approx 4-6″ that lies flat from the canister to the reel on the opposite side.
9. Go out and take some pictures!
10. If you’re a bit stuck as to how to operate the automatic functions of your camera, set it to Aperture Priority and let it do the work for you. On Nikons that’s the round dial on the top set to A, on Canons it’s Av. If you have an autofocus lens, let it do its work by half depressing the shutter to set the focus, and then frame your shot before depressing fully.
11. The best way to learn how to take photographs is by using a SLR on manual. Choose your aperture and change the shutter speed until the meter you can see through the viewfinder registers in the middle. You’ll see what I mean by switching on the camera and looking. The same illuminated strip will show a bright dot when your lens is in focus. Get used to using these, and something like the sunny 16 rule to decide your exposure settings. Or yes, just ignore all that and go to 10. until you feel more confident.
12. When the film is finished, it will rewind automatically back into the canister. When the whirring stops, open the back and take out the film for processing. There is at least one film processing shop in every medium sized town or busy High Street, and several large supermarkets do film processing. You can expect to pay between about £3 and £5 to develop and print a 36 frame colour film, and maybe another £1 or so to scan your photos in small size to a CD. More about that in another post.
13. If you’ve tried all the above, and got nada, your camera might just need a thorough service. In the north-east I can thoroughly recommend APM Camera Repairs in Old Eldon Sq in Newcastle, or RGB in Middlesbrough. Ask for a CLA (camera, lens, aperture), which will check things like shutter speed too, and the condition of your lens. If the camera belonged to your beloved mum or grandad, it’s definitely worth repairing, even if you’re told that the repair costs more than it’s worth. The price of all types of film cameras has plummeted lately, so it’s probably not worth selling on eBay in any case.
Please do let me know how you get on, or if you’ve done this yourself and have anything to add. These plastic 35mm film cameras were the top of their league back in the day, and are still the best tools you can get for snapshots, holiday photos and for learning, and the results are always much better than you can get with the digital point-and-shoot Santa Claus brought for your nephew.
But that’s a whole other story.
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Edit: a few additional resources
Canon EOS range unofficial manual and guidance
Canon 1000fn official specifications on Canon’s camera museum pages
The inimitable Ken Rockwell on Nikon film cameras.
More than you ever wanted to know from the Nikonian gentlemen’s club.
The Pentax user forum
Olympus - thanks Alex!
Film:
7 Day Shop
I’ve got some nice Agfa for sale - sold out, sorry!
Developing:
Spectrum Imaging in Newcastle (will also do mail order)
RGB in Middlesbrough
Colourworld Imaging, North Shields
Digitalab, Stepney bank, Newcastle
Photofast Sligo
Max Spielmann in Birmingham are allegedly a disgrace.
Snappy Snaps is okay in London, check provincial branches
Peak Imaging (mail order)
[this developing lark is a whole post in itself!]
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16 Responses to “What to do if you inherit a 35mm film camera”
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Sad to learn that now a film SLR needs to be treated like something dug out of a time capsule or an alien space ship.
Perhaps the most important aspect of using film cameras (as opposed to digital) is that you have to pay for each exposure, and they come in 24 or 36 exposure rolls. Which means you have to pay attention when you shoot. This is not something that enters the mind of most digital camera users today, who are used to shooting off a few thousand images a week.
Film forces you to consider what you’re doing — to compose the shot in your mind and then in the camera and to take a picture as if it was your only chance, because more often than not it is your only chance.
This discipline works great when translated to the digital medium.
Care and forethought pay off.
Thank you for your considered comment, Richard. You are absolutely right about the forethought.
I also think that when the high cost of digital hardware and its rapid depreciation is taken into account, film really isn’t expensive.
These fully-featured film SLRs have plummeted in resale value. Recently I saw a Nikon F5 sell for under £100, and I sold a very nice Nikon 601 for only £34 last spring. If you aren’t lucky enough to inherit one of these, now is a great time to buy one.
My gifted OM1 is feeling marginalised! Glad to see you back B.
I started taking photos in New York City around 1964 when I bought my first Nikon, a Nikkormat, when I was 20. Moving to Berkeley in ‘68 it was quickly stolen and it took me a couple of years to afford a new camera, a Nikon FN (a cheaper, lighter version of the F). In the 70’s I managed to upgrade to an F2, which I used for the next 20 years, shooting thousands of images. In the ’90’s, getting too old to lug such a heavy camera and my favorite 85mm Nikkor lens around on hikes and thru airports, I bought an N80, which I loved until I got a pocket 3100 just to see what all this digital stuff was about. Last spring I got my own Nikon D80 and I am totally amazed with the results. Much of this 40+ year legacy of images, all taken on Nikon cameras, is on my photoblog, http://rchrd.com/photo . And even tho I have embraced the digital medium completely, what I learned by taking film serves me well today.
PS: I forgot to add that I still have the F2 and the N80 and various Nikkor lenses (that won’t fit on my D80). They are my treasure and I will not sell them. And occasionally I will charge them up with film and take them for a walk, and it all starts to come back to me.
[...] of the winter demesne series of projects, these are a couple of the 35mm test photographs from that legacy Canon. It works: marvelous! And although it’s grainy, the way-past-sell-by colour film retrieved [...]
Richard, I’ve got both the N80 (called a F80 here) and a D80 and I love them both, but I do tend to use them for different things. Many self-styled ’serious’ photographers eschew 35mm altogether, but after experimenting with this Canon over the holiday, my F80 is coming out a whole lot more.
Your 40 year legacy is most impressive. May I post a photo and link to your earlier work, credited of course?
Alex:
What an OMission! Could you do a review? I didn’t find much on the net about older Olympuses. And thank you, it’s good to be back. :)
Perhaps the most important aspect of using film cameras (as opposed to digital) is that you have to pay for each exposure, and they come in 24 or 36 exposure rolls. Which means you have to pay attention when you shoot. This is not something that enters the mind of most digital camera users today, who are used to shooting off a few thousand images a week.
You’re not going to be wanting one of these then ;)
EXILIM EX-F1
CES 2008: Casio today announced its EXILIM EX-F1 - a six megapixel camera with 12x zoom and some very impressive burst shooting capabilities. Capturing up to 60 frames per second at full resolution and a staggering 1200 fps if you drop the image size to 336 x 96 … Helping to ensure the moment isn’t missed is a buffer system which continually updates then saves the contents to card when the shutter is released.
Looks a lot of fun tho…. :)
Might as well buy a HiDef Video camera and use it as a still camera %-)
[...] Lovely stuff from some film prosyletisers, including an article about rehabilitating older manual film SLRs, although I do still prefer these. [...]
Great post, Brenda. As a lifetime film user, it’s really strange to see instructions for using a film camera, but with more and more people being brought up on digital and turning to film, it’s much needed advice.
…most digital camera users today, who are used to shooting off a few thousand images a week.
Using film is a time saver, with less shots to deal with you spend less time choosing the best one and delete the rest of the 1000.
[...] Go back to carrying around a 35mm film camera all the [...]
[...] 35mm film branded from a shop that’s been long gone, while testing that lovely old 35mm Canon camera, at New Year down at Strandhill in Co Sligo. Exquisite [...]
[...] What to do if you inherit a 35mm film camera? [...]
Just a note that CLA stands for Cleaning, Lubrication and Adjustment, not camera, lens, aperture….
take care
Pete