Recently I had the opportunity to teach a young man about film photography. He asked me if he could borrow a film camera as he wanted to take some black and white pictures. He already has a Fuji mirrorless camera and is getting very creative.

I offered him the use of my old Pentax K1000 and this is where it got interesting, I realised when we started talking that he had no idea how a film camera actually worked, which is understandable, and also that the concept of using a manual camera with a light meter was a very different proposition to the digital world in which he has grown up. The whole concept of adjusting your settings for each shot, and not having the camera auto focus or set the speed and aperture is something he was going to have to learn.

He has some very ambitious plans to take black and white images around old church yards in the fading light of day, his vision is for stark, bold images with high contrast. A really tall order for your first time out with a film camera one would think.

We did the basics, how to load a spool, how to take images, and rewind the spool when he is finished, how to use a light meter after setting the ISO of the film, we talked about shutter speed, aperture, focal length and manual focusing. We also covered good camera posture (No image stabilization on the K1000) and he was ready to go....... Well not quite.

He has one advantage over me, he can take the Fuji with him, set up test shots mimic the aperture and speed and get a pretty good idea how the shot is likely to come out. In my day it was take the shots and wait till I got home to my darkroom to see if I had really cracked it.

The proof as they say, will be in the pudding. I will post one or two of his images once he gets them printed.