Analog Photography
It’s 2025, we have fantastic digital cameras with instant responses and yet for some of us in the photography community there is a calling back to a much more simple time of Analog photography in fact companies like Fujifilm have tried to captilize on the surge of interest by introducing the X Half.
I got my hands on the X Half during the 2025 Fujikina to see what it is capable of. As I said to the sales person there are some draw backs to the Half X for example it doesn’t have RAW functionality and your not able to edit film recipies like you can with the Ricoh . Yes the camera isn’t aimed at professional photographers and the unique selling point is the ability to lock down film mode filters but without being able to modify or make them your own from a photography perspective splashing out an extra £200-300 on a Ricoh might be the better option.
Anyway let’s get back on track, Analog Photography.
The Camera that arrived after the trip… oops!
Before going on the trip to Iceland I made a concious decision to grab my first Analog camera, I went with a company that had been advertising analog cameras on facebook (I won’t mention their name as I don’t wish to give them publicity for their abysal customer support) and sadly the camera arrived after I went to Iceland, The camera I had purchased contained packaging contained an image of the church I had planned to take an image of with the Analog camera which was a bit of a smack to the face when returning home.
So I ended up visiting Reykjavík Foto picking up a Kodak UltraMax film and Kodak M38. I have sent them in for processing at a local camera shop and once they are ready I’ll be posting them up to my gallery, I had only 24 compositions to work with and of those I know a few won’t be particularly fantastic but I enjoyed experimenting with a new camera that I only had a limited ability to work with so thinking about shots was super important, I couldn’t just take an image of everything I had to make sure whatever I was going to take would be perfect the first time round. These freedoms are now taken for granted with digital photography and ofcourse with Analog comes the cost of the film and the processing too but there is something special or even magical about picking up a roll of film, loading it into your own camera and then taking the photos and winding the film back at the end not knowing if it’s okay or you hit a snag. I’m now hooked on Analog 35mm photography and I can’t wait to see how it turns out on future journeys.