Tag: 35mm

With a week-long beach adventure fast approaching on the calendar, I decided to break out the Minolta X-370 again and put a roll through it. I planned on taking it and a number of other as-yet-untested cameras with me to decide which I was going to keep and which I was going to part with (Spoiler alert: I only parted with one, and I regret it).

I took the camera with me to go hang out with some friends, and while I’d like to blame the soft focus on my poor vision, there may or may not have been some other factors involved.

The thing is, though, I like these shots. They are as blurry and chaotic as the evening turned out to be. Not every photo was worth sharing, but they all represent the moment perfectly, and I think that’s more important than perfect lighting and tack-sharp focus.

Like a true child of the 80’s, I took a photography class in high school. I absolutely fell in love with the process of developing film and making prints, but once the class ended, I no longer had access to continue experimenting. A few of those old photos survive, but aren’t worth sharing, as I had no clue at all what I was doing.

Some time around Christmas 2017, I obtained a Minolta X-370 and a pair of lenses. The camera had belonged to my wife’s uncle, who had passed away. Having just had a few rolls from the Mamiya C33 developed, I was interested in getting back to shooting 35mm and reliving that classic experience.

The X-370 sports an aperture priority mode, so it was a much simpler experience than the C-33, but it was still a manual focus camera, and even in my 30’s I refused to wear corrective lenses, hence a lot of soft focus. I really didn’t understand how aperture affected the depth of field yet either, so combine that with shooting mostly indoors on Christmas and it makes sense that these images are less than stellar. Still, they invoke a sense of nostalgia, and I smile whenever I look at them – but a lot of that has to do with my son’s Christmas morning hair.