Knowing the Limitations of Your Old Film Camera, and Using Them to Your Advantage (Part 1)

I’ve stuck to using the same 1974 Kiev brand camera, which belonged to my grandpa, for a few years now. I love the feeling of getting re-acquainted with it upon picking it up after a long dry spell, and I love even more that it`s truly mine; no one else knows its unique quirks, its kinks, its advantages and especially its limitations.

A Kiev camera 4a model, like mine.

                                                     

As great as they are, these old film cameras just aren't capable of doing certain things that digital or instant cameras can do. To get the most out of a camera like this one, you should get acquainted with its limitations.

Firstly, the F-stop on these cameras can`t be adjusted... Because there isn't one. If you want to take a far-out shot like a picture of a whole city, it will look great. If you want to take a portrait or a shot of someone standing in front of something, it should also turn out good. However, if you want to, for example, take a photo of a person with mountains behind them in the distance, and have both the person in the foreground and the mountains in the background be fully focused, you`re out of luck. Simply put, you can focus on the foreground or the background, not both.

Here is a man sitting down. Note the slightly blurry people walking behind him, even though they aren't that far in the background.

Note that if something is within about 1-2 meters of what you are focusing on, it, too, will be sharp. But, as mentioned, if the distance between them is significant, then you have to choose one or the other to focus on.

Since the cats outside of the shop are so close to the shop and the cat inside, they are all in focus.

Though this is a limitation to some extent, I think it's actually an advantage: this is what makes film photos come to life, because of it they look more 3-dimensional than the flat photos produced by their automatic and/or digital counterparts. If everything is equally in focus, like with most point-and-shoot cameras, nothing can stand out.

Here's a good example of the foreground slowly fading into the background, with no harsh contrast of focus \ blur like in the preceding shots.

A city view shot of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as another example.

To be continued...