I learned early that a lot of "broken" film cameras aren't broken—they're just stuck. The symptoms were always the same: you'd cock the shutter, press the release, and nothing would happen… or it would fire once and then lock up like it was offended you asked it to work in 2026. Sometimes it wasn't a dramatic failure, just that dead, sluggish feeling of old grease turning into glue.
If you're trying to choose between the original Pentax 645 and the Mamiya M645 1000S, you're not really asking about features. You're asking which one will make your portraits and landscapes look the way you want.
There's a stretch of Highway 69 outside Muskogee that I've driven enough times to stop noticing it. You know the kind of road I mean — your brain goes into cruise control, the scenery becomes background noise, and you're just trying to get where you're going without getting stuck behind a log truck doing 42 in a 65.
I know exactly where this starts: standing in front of the fridge, door open, chilly air spilling out, pretending I’m just “checking what I have” when I already know every box and canister by heart.
Every film shooter has a version of this story.
When outlets can fill galleries with “credit-only” submissions, quality drops, prices crater, and working shooters quietly burn out. I’ve been part of the problem. Here’s why I’m done working for free—and how I’m building paid alternatives that serious shooters can copy without burning bridges.
If you’ve ever looked at National Geographic’s “Your Shot” favorites and thought, “I could never compete with that,” you’re not alone—and you’re also probably aiming at the wrong target. Most photographers assume editors are hunting for the sharpest file, the cleanest composition, or the most technically “correct” exposure. A picture editor’s job isn’t to find the most perfect photograph. It’s to find the photograph that can carry attention, meaning, and credibility—fast—and still feels worth returning to later.
If you spend any time in film forums, you’ll see a familiar pattern: someone buys an Epson V600, scans a roll they’re really excited about, and immediately decides the scanner is trash.
By the time I pack up my monopod and walk off the field on a Saturday, my memory cards are loaded with a thousand frames. By Sunday morning, parents are already texting to ask when the gallery goes up. That’s the job: move fast, stay consistent, and tell the story of the game without spending the rest of the week dragging sliders. That’s why I shoot JPEG—on purpose, not by accident, not because I don’t know what Raw can do, but because the work I do doesn’t require me to excavate shadows five stops deep. It requires timing, clear color, and a fast delivery.
On the rig, the camera only came out on the easy days.
Film prices aren’t creeping up anymore; they’re sprinting.
Film photography has quiet weeks where the news feels like a half-used roll you forgot in a drawer. This wasn’t one of those weeks.
The first time the R7 choked on a third-and-short, I felt it in my chest. I was on the sideline, ten yards ahead of the play, finger down, trusting the tiny motor under my thumb to keep up with a world that had just gone from strolling to sprinting. Five… six… seven frames in and the picture flow hiccupped—the stream turned to a stutter—and my running back chose that half-second to change direction and break a tackle. I have a folder full of the prelude and not the punchline. With my old 6D, the pace was honest and simple: a handful of frames per second and an optical viewfinder that never lied. The R7 is a hummingbird by comparison—faster, sharper, with extra reach that feels like cheating—until it teaches you that speed without rhythm is just noise.
Film is having another moment. Thrift stores are lighter on old SLRs than they used to be; teenagers are loading rolls their grandparents forgot about; family closets keep surrendering shoeboxes that smell like basements, cedar, and Kodachrome. If you want those images to live again—on phones, on walls, in books—you don’t need a museum-grade scanner or a lab behind a glass wall. You need a steady hand, a repeatable rhythm, and a machine that shows up every time. For me, that’s the Epson Perfection V600 Photo Scanner.
Tell most sports shooters you’re covering a football game with a 100mm macro and they’ll smile politely, the way you smile at someone who swears by decaf. But youth football isn’t the NFL. The field is smaller, the pace is choppier, and the best stories live within arm’s length of the sideline. In that environment—under sun, not stadium lamps—the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro on a Canon 6D is a secret weapon.
Walk into any thrift store today and you might see it: a teenager with blue hair and earbuds thumbing through a dusty bin of film cameras, holding up a Canon AE-1 like it’s a time machine. For Gen Z, film was the cool rebellion—the antidote to megapixels and algorithms. They rediscovered what their parents left behind, turned Kodak Gold into an Instagram aesthetic, and made a $50 point-and-shoot worth five times that on eBay.
Eleven years ago, I bought the Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L (non-IS). It wasn’t the lens most people in sports photography recommended. It didn’t have the aura of the f/2.8 — the sideline king, the badge of seriousness, the one that whispers “pro” when you sling it over your shoulder.
I’ve shot with a lot of cameras, film and digital—but if there’s one that’s been through it all with me, it’s the Canon 6D. This isn’t a pixel-peeping review comparing MTF charts or arguing about dynamic range. This is a look back at a decade spent with one of Canon’s most underrated full frame DSLRs. From dusty MiLB diamonds and fluorescent-lit engineering offices to golden hour family portraits and rain-soaked street photography, my 6D has quietly been the backbone of my professional and personal work.
The best baseball photographs don’t always happen when the crowd is standing and the lights buzz a little hotter. Sometimes the picture you keep is the one that smells like rosin and bubblegum—the quiet breath between pitches when the game is thinking about what it wants to be next.
It’s easy to lose track of how quickly new cameras come and go. In a digital era where product cycles last 12 months, photographer John P. Wineberg’s relationship with a single tool feels almost radical. In his recent vlog, “40 Years With This Camera!” he celebrates the Nikon FE2 and the 50mm f/1.8 lens he bought as a college student in 1985. His video is more than a gear chat; it’s a reflection on what happens when you spend decades with a single piece of equipment and how it shapes the way you see.
Street photography thrives on observation and instinct. In a recent video essay, photographer E.J. Chako shares five books that reshaped his approach to the streets. Each title offers a distinct lesson—from studying the masters to unlocking your own voice.
In a recent video for B&H’s On Deck: Sports and Storytelling series, one of my favorite sports photographers and Sony Artisan of Imagery Jean Fruth shares how she consistently captures dynamic baseball images.
In 2025, photography has never been faster or more automated. Cameras track eyes at 60 frames per second and send 45-megapixel raws to your phone in seconds. Yet thousands of photographers are loading Kodak and Ilford rolls, proving film isn’t dead—it’s thriving as a cultural counterpunch.
Thomas Heaton drops a quick gut check on the state of film: remember when old point-and-shoots gathered dust in thrift stores, then suddenly became flex pieces on Instagram? Overnight, Contax compacts leapt from a few hundred bucks to nosebleed prices. That wave carried a lot of us back into the darkroom.
