Susan and I were very fortunate to have some great friends from here in Alabama who were working in Germany last year and invited us to come visit! We decided to take an old medium format film camera along for the fun of it! Shooting film again was great, but all the architecture was so big and tall and the streets so narrow, we needed a wide angle lens, bad!

We decided to look for one on the second leg of our trip, in Paris! Thankfully, Susan had a friend living there who hooked us up with an awesome place to stay! On our first day in the city we found the camera district. With about 20 camera shops within a two block radius, we were in heaven! We found a medium format camera store and sure enough, a wide angle lens to fit the Bronica 645, 80 euros was even a great price! We spoke no French, but the lady at the store spoke enough English to verify the price and make the transaction. After signing the card receipt I looked at the price and it was 800 Euros! That can’t be right I thought. I talked to the owner and he verified the price and explained to me that he could not give me a refund on a credit card and that they were leaving for lunch for an hour or two. We had just paid 4 times more for one lens than we had for the camera and lens in the states. After getting shown the door and freaking out a little, we found a cafe around the corner to try to figure out what to do about our overpriced lens and our newly blown budget! Susan mentioned that she had seen a used Contax 645, which is a camera some of our favorite photographers use. Maybe they will take the lens back on trade for the camera, she suggested. After a quick search on ebay, we discovered the price on the Contax was far less than in The States. I know the folks at the camera store thought we were crazy Americans, but thankfully, they let us trade the lens in on the camera.

We shot so much film for the rest of our trip in Paris and in the French Countryside and discovered how much fun photography was all over again. Shooting film forced us to slow down, compose, see, and best of all think! You cant just fire frames off like digital because every frame means something and costs something. It has even helped us become better photographers when shooting digital, because the same principals we re-learned shooting film, apply to digital as well.

Since we have gotten back to the states we have had fun incorporating shooting film into our work and using it in certain situations or on special projects. Here are a few shots from France, photographed with the amazing camera we didn’t even mean to buy.