1/7/2025
For a long time, I've been fascinated by instant film photography, and had always wanted a Polaroid camera ever since I was in middle school. I did eventually get one for Christmas like 3 years ago, but it was a Fujifilm Instax Mini and not actually a Polaroid model. (I still like that camera tho!)
It wasn't until my previous college semester, where my photography class would broaden my interest in the hobby. We were taught to use SLR cameras, which could either be digital or film, but us students mostly used digital for the sake of convenience. We were to buy our own cameras for the class as stated in the syllabus our teacher gave us, which also had a list of recommended cameras to get. One of which was from Canon's Rebel line, who's 2000s DSLR models sold for nice cheap prices on EBay. I got the EOS Digital Rebel for under $60 which not only came in good condition, but came with everything I needed such as a lens, charger, battery, and even a 1 terabyte SD card.
For a first DSLR, it worked pretty good, even if I couldn't get the ISO higher than 1600, or maybe that was just old technology being old technology. Nonetheless, I had fun completing assignments with this thing, especially because I was lucky that I was residing temporarily in an RV park at the time, which had plenty of areas with pretty-looking natural scenery to gather photos from. Photography class was probably the most fun I've had in any college class. Perhaps I am lucky to have had been taught within campus for the first time ever.
As the semester ended around December, me and my family finally moved into our new home. We opened one of the boxes containing two cameras, which I couldn't use for the class because they were deep within storage at the time. One was another 2000s Canon Rebel DSLR that was slightly newer than the one I used, and the other was a Minolta Maxxum StSi, a 35mm film camera that my Mom used to photograph me and my brother as babies with. I've thought about learning how to use a regular old 35mm film camera during my previous semester, but I never knew that I could have one right in my hands, in good condition and working fine. Despite that, the viewfinder did look kind of yellowed and had a few strange red spots that could be seen when the eyes are put far from it. I used some of the 2-decade-old expired film left with the camera by using the 1-stop-per-decade trick. I didn't get to develop the film I've used just yet, since my college's dark room doesn't develop colored film so I can't decide whether or not these issued impacted the photographs in some way shape or form. It was also around the previous year's family holiday vacation where I learned that my stepsister did some film photography with a Kodak point-and-shoot camera, and she told me that she ships her film to somewhere in Miami to get it developed, so I'll keep that in mind and find out what darkroom studio that city has. I'll hopefully post my film photographs from that Minolta camera on here after I get it developed and digitally scanned.
