Monday column: How did I Get Into the Analog Photography

None the less that I’m old enough to start with photography in analogue times, I waited the time that digital cameras was good enough and cheap enough, so I could afford one. Before that I didn’t know how to begin. Black and white photography, with your own developing and printing seemed to me too complicated, colour photography without intimacy and too expensive.  At that time (in the nineties) actually I was photographing with my parents “focus free P&S”. But only sunsets, home cats and dogs. So this time I don’t count as my photographic experience.  So I waited the time when I had enough money to buy my own photographic camera. It was a P&S, and digital. But it was mine own photographic camera. And with it, I could get some photographic experience. But my photographic years (for me) began to counting only when I get a DSLR. Only then, for me none the less, I start the learning of the photographic way.

Agfa Isola 1, a frame from the first roll of film

Then deep into the photography, I started to look at my grandfather’s legacy in different way. I’d remembered that we have an old camera in the cabinet.  I remembered that as a child, from time to time I was taking it from the cabinet and played with it. But wait. It seemed to be in working order. Could possibly be still working? Only film was odd format. The camera was very old, and I wondered could I possibly still get the film for the camera? At that time I have already heard about medium format photographic equipment. But for my surprise when I was taking measures for the opening in camera where the film plane it should be, it was 56 mm in both directions. It was hard to believe it. The camera was too simple to be a medium format! At that time I did not know, that 120 format film was a standard in past times, because of low resolution of film around WW2. Yes Leica format was in use, but at that time (before the war) the only advantage of 35 mm film was portability (and number of frames of course). So when I learned all about 120 format film, I bought some, put it into the camera and start to do some true analogue photography. The camera was Agfa Isola 1. And of course I had to learn how to develop the film after exposure. But this is another story.
Matjaž