Plus, in my opinion, while you can get the same effects using software to alter digital pictures, a lot of film cameras produce truly original results without that extra step. Of course there is the added disadvantage that your pictures won't turn out at all. It's all a trade-off.
This is the camera I purchased:
It's official title is the "SuperHeadz: White Slim Angel (Wide Angle Lens) Camera"
Found here: http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/wide-angle-slim/ (and also Amazon of course)
It has a ultra wide lens (the picture can span a wide lateral area),
and I love the vivid colors of the pictures after the film was developed:
'And let me just say right now, Photojojo the site I purchased the camera from is excellent, for the non-photography saavy like myself :-) Not only do they sell excellent products, they send out a newsletter you can subscribe to via email, chopped full of fun tips and projects. For example, this one: Doing double exposures with your friends- which for those that don't know, double exposure means taking two pictures on the same roll of film, overlayed. It creates a really cool effect of two pictures meshed together...
http://content.photojojo.com/diy/friendly-double-exposures/
One of my fondest memories was when I and my Dad went out one day and he taught me how to use his Manual Nikon.
It looks a lot like this:
Now, as I said before, I'm not camera saavy AT ALL. But it was A BLAST. He taught me the basics of how to use a manual camera, and it's really not as hard as one might think.(Like I always say, if I can do it, ANYONE can lol.) To me, there are just two basic facts you should know to get you started.
1. Setting the shutter speed.
This determines how much your film is exposed to light (on some digital cameras you can actually alter this setting, the auto feature usually just sets it for you.) In photography, shutter speed is a common term used to discuss exposure time, the effective length of time a camera's shutter is open. The total exposure is proportional to this exposure time, or duration of light reaching the film or image sensor.
In addition to its effect on exposure, the shutter speed changes the way movement appears in the picture. Very short shutter speeds can be used to freeze fast-moving subjects, for example at sporting events. Very long shutter speeds are used to intentionally blur a moving subject for artistic effect.
Hopefully, this little picture I found on Wikipedia will help explain :)
The first picture of the pinwheel was taken with a short exposure, and captured the the pinwheel very quickly. It appears that pinwheel wasn't even spinning at all, because it just captured that one moment in time. It looks frozen in time.
The second was taken with a longer exposure time, and the effect is more visible, you can see the pinwheel was actually spinning through the blurs of the colors.
And... in the third you can see how all the colors were captured during the longest light exposure and the effect it creates. Pretty cool, huh?
2. Adjusting the aperture.
This is a little more difficult to explain, but I will try my best... (Most of this was gathered from Wikipedia :-) )
In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture of an optical system is the opening that determines the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. This is just fancy language to say that the aperture controls the depth of field, or the distance range over which objects are acceptably sharp. If an aperture is narrow, then highly collimated rays are admitted, resulting in a sharp focus at the image plane. If an aperture is wide, then uncollimated rays are admitted, resulting in a sharp focus only for rays with a certain focal length. This means that a wide aperture results in an image that is sharp around what the lens is focusing on and blurred otherwise. The aperture also determines how many of the incoming rays are actually admitted and thus how much light reaches the image plane (the narrower the aperture, the darker the image for a given exposure time).
So you blur the background, and bring the object you are looking at into focus, or vice versa.
Here's a pic that hopefully provides a visual:
This picture was taken with a narrow aperture, and a slow shutter speed.
This picture was taken with a wide aperture, and a fast shutter speed.
Well, those are the basics, if you're interested (and if you're not hopefully you're not still reading by this point!)
Just want to wrap up by concluding the story I started earlier- about the day I and my Dad went out with his manual Nikon. I remember very few pictures actually came out (don't be disappointed if your first trail run results this way, you have to learn to do these adjustments and every camera is different), but we took one roll of color film and one black and white. We went to our church, to the graveyard- for those of you who are wondering why we went there, you should take a walk in a graveyard sometime, they are really beautiful, peaceful places with all kinds of interesting features to photograph on the graves and flowers- and then we went up to the University. My two favorite photographs of my father, I took that day! All by myself! They were some of the only black and white photos that came out that day. I L-O-V-E them, and never could have achieved the custom look they have with a digital camera. The framed photos sit atop my bookcase, and will forever capture my father and that day. Those two freeze frame moments bring a smile to my face. Every time I look at them, I go right back to that day. To me, they capture what photography is all about, capturing memories with loved ones. :)
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