It’s March 5^th, 2024 and I am scanning in a roll of Fujifilm Neopan Acros II taken on a Canon A-1. The A-1 had recently been serviced and is in top notch condition. I’ve owned it for over ten years and before me it belonged to my father-in-law. I didn’t know it, but this would be the last roll of film I would shoot to date.

I didn’t plan on quitting YouTube and film at the same time, that’s just how it worked out. I was actually testing my Nikon F100 with a dummy roll (technically my last last one but it doesn’t count) for a road trip and was unhappy with the results. This would be the straw that broke the camels back, as I had lost too many would-be great images to chemical, and mechanical malfunctions. I just wanted the shot, and I didn’t care what it was shot on.

Part of me does miss film, for sure, but living in a condo now, instead of a duplex there isn’t room for a full wet darkroom, and while I miss the act of shooting film, I don’t miss the cost, time or unpredictability of it.

I keep checking to see when Pentax is set to release a full-fledged SLR because honestly, that would be enough to draw me back to the land of analog. The Pentax 17 is beautiful and I once held it, and on a surface level I love it, but it’s half-frame, and lacks manual controls. So to date any camera worth it to me is a year older than it was when I hung up my film to dry for the last time.

I did come across a neat little film lab (actually called Neat Film Lab) in my area and talked shop with (I presume) one of the owners, and was impressed with their services.

I know, a lot of this sounds depressing, and for awhile it was, but as a result of this boycott, for lack of a better term, I’ve discovered that many people seemed to care more about what I was shooting “with”, than what I was shooting “of”, and as an artist, that is not a good place to be.

The reality is I will pick up film again someday. I think when that ever elusive new, all-manual film camera is released we’re going to be in for a second resurgence, because the reality now is that there are less film cameras every day. While we have fantastic companies like Camera Rescue, and Cameradactyl, people in the community are screaming for their very own unboxing, and the new-SLR-smell.