So I know many people have been following my epic mission to digitise my 35mm negatives…no? Well I know at least one person has been following my vaguely interesting mission to digitise my 35mm negatives, and they will know that I have concluded that it is impossible to do without a dedicated scanner. Enter the Canon CanoScan 8400F – an absolute behemoth of a flatbed scanner that was released onto an unsuspecting public in 2004. Best thing about it – it is all about the 35mm scanning, with fully backlit dedicated film scanning negative holders and the like, oh, and it cost me £40.

This isn’t a review of the scanner – its old, its clunky, it scans things, it was a nightmare to get working on windows 10 (oh you actually want a review…? Here is one from 2004!). This is the story of my first roll of 35mm film.

It all began when I responded to a freecycle advert from a guy giving away a whole bunch of expired 35mm film. I didn’t own a film camera, I hadn’t a clue how to shoot film, I didn’t even know what it actually meant for film to be expired – I went along and got it anyway. When I arrived it transpired that he had been a professional photographer for most of his life, and was finally making the switch to digital. He wanted to get rid of a whole bunch of other film developing stuff, some chemistry, an enlarger, I think even some paper – I had no idea what that stuff did at the time, so I didn’t take it – something I regret to this day!

Nonetheless I went home with my box of what must have been about 40 canisters of expired film. There was a bit of everything, ancient Kodachrome, some medium format which I gave away to someone who knew far more about photography than me, some Kodak 400 (also given away) and some apparently not so out of date Kentmere and Ilford rolls.

One charity shop visit later, and armed with an ancient Ricoh KR-10, which subsequently developed a truly epic light leak, but which I still have the beautiful Pentax 50mm from, I went on my first photography mission.

I didn’t go that far, all the pictures were taken within about a 10-minute walk from where I was living at the time, which just happened to be next to a railway line. The pictures were not actually too bad considering I was shooting in manual mode without really understanding what difference aperture, shutter speed and ISO were going to make to my images.

The fun came though when I developed my first roll. I had decided that this was something I had to do at home in my bathroom – I would never be beholden to those corporations making vast sums of money developing people’s photos. Sums so vast that by this time they had mostly shut down, and I am assuming happily retired. A number of internet how-to guides and a trip to the library later and I was prepared – I had my developing tank, and epic Soviet-era looking thing that I still use to this day and my chemistry – I distinctly remember using Kodak developer and Ilford fixer, but I think I just used whatever was cheapest. My ‘changing bag’ was a very dark cupboard, my stop bath didn’t exist, and I prized open the film canister with a monkey wrench (I still sometimes to this to be honest).

I have to admit that I am pretty proud of the results! The main issue was that I hadn’t had any practice in winding the film onto the developing tank roll, so there are lots of places where it was touching and the developer couldn’t reach it – aside from this though, simply following the instructions on the developer, and being intensely careful (far more so than I am now) about the temperature yielded some pretty nice results – especially now I have put them through my new (old) scanner – and thus began my love affair with 35mm.

[Show slideshow]

1 2 ... 4 ►

You can read the story of my first attempts to get these negatives digitised here, and my first foray into a dark room is a story for another time – but I will always be grateful for that guy who gave away a biscuit tin full of film  to someone who had no idea what to do with it.