Paco Romero Photography

Sometimes I get film nostalgia and feel compelled to go back to the old ways. For me the nostalgia is more sentimental and emotional than rational - I love the little film camera from my father that I keep in its immaculate condition, a wonderful Olympus OM-1, in all its mechanical simplicity. I love the noise it makes when I press the trigger, the feel of the trigger as I press it, and the great view I get thru the viewfinder. And I love the memories associated with this camera, memories about my father.

So when the nostalgia hits me I get the camera out of its brown leather case, put a roll of film in it, and take some pictures. Today I connected a Pocket Wizard to the flash sync port and shot the camera with a softbox. I ran to Costco to have the film developed and then I scanned one of the frames in my very sh*tty flatbad scanner.

When I opened the image in Photoshop, the disappointment started to replace the nostalgia. While the feel of photographing with this little camera is wonderful, the images I get are not. It’s not the camera or the lens, for sure, it’s my poor ability to make decent digital images of my color negatives. I’d need a much better scanner, and much better knowledge about how to scan, in order to go a good job. The scan had at least 100 specks of dust, and I had just taken the negative from the sleeve to put in into the scanner tray. The image just doesn’t look good.

So now I get the urge to get a good scanner to do justice to the negative, which I know is good. But then I realize that I am trying to mix film and digital, at some expense, to simply feed the feeling of nostalgia. There is nothing special about the images I took with the Olympus OM-1 - the only special thing is what’s inside of me when I touch the camera, it’s a purely emotional thing. I can do a better job with digital equipment.

So… I think I will not try to bring those negatives into the digital realm - when the urge to shoot film overtakes me, I’ll run a couple of rolls thru it and print them 4×6 but not scan them. It’s just for the pleasure of feeling the camera in my hands.

Here is the scanned image. I don’t like how my wife’s right arm is posed, but I like their expressions. We’ll put it away as a Mother’s Day portrait.

Olympus OM-1, with Fuji Superia ASA 400, f/11 1/60, with a softbox to camera right. Some postprocessing in Photoshop, including skin smoothing.  Converted to platinum monochrome on the computer.

Mother's day