The whole roll #1
The roll, the whole roll and nothing but the roll.
I’ve been photographing analog personal work for around four years. Like with all things (for me, probably not for you), I thought analog was hard. Specifically, too hard for me. But I mentioned that self-doubt to my dad (journalist with analog photographic experience) who promptly diagnosed the problem as being my camera. Essentially, it didn’t work.
He dusted off his old Nikon FM and let me loose on it.
Film is expensive and I find it hard to spend money on “myself”, so it’s lucky that shooting film feels a bit like an addiction. Having a hungry camera (with no film in its little black plastic tummy) is an empty feeling.
“I’ll just buy one more roll for now so there’s something in it if I suddenly need to take a photo,” I think to myself.
And then, “I can’t have the camera sitting there, loaded up, not taking photos with it. What’s the point, then?”
Then…
“I’d better finish it off so I can develop it…”
Rinse (in developer, stop bath, fixer, water) and repeat.
Just one more roll…
There’s guilt as well. I know very well that film is not an inexpensive hobby. So, while we were buying vegetables from the “please eat me soon” basket, I was blowing 15 bucks for a roll, another 15 to have it developed and then 15 for a scan.
I made things “cheaper” by buying chemicals to do my own developing (read: getting Felix to do my developing while I stand there with a stopwatch shouting “agitate!” every 30 seconds") and getting a scanner to do my own scans.
I will say this: the expense is a great motivator to be careful and become better. Even so, Felix points out film photography is also akin to a gambling addiction. It feels so, so good to load the camera, to line up the shots, the press the wildly satisfying shutter, to roll the film back into the canister, to get negatives back from the lab, to scan them in and usually it even feels really good to see that scan.
It’s a real thrill.
There are 36 images in a roll, give or take, and Instagram allows 20 per post. It punishes landsape and makes mixing hard.
I’ve realised this is the best place to put my hard-won analog images, so I’ll be sending a little Substack post each time I get a new roll scanned.
These are from July this year, just three-and-a-half short months ago, but already a distant memory like a fever dream in this grey and orange Gothenburg autumn.
This roll was Ilford Kentmere Pan 400 developed in Kodak D-76, white vinegar stop bath and Ilford method rinse. Scanned on my Plustek 8100.
(Disclaimer: I do NOT use AI to write my posts, edit my images or reply to your comments.)










































Lovely!
I enjoyed the lot the whole lot and nothing but the lot!