Last year, in search of what I had thought of as my old film stuff (i.e. the films and camera I’d used in 2013), I dug through a bunch of large plastic storage tubs that had migrated with me, mostly unexamined and absolutely never unpacked, from Fordham University dorm to Bronx and Queens apartments to central Pennsylvania house. I did find the Canon AE-1 I wrote about last November, as well as a bunch of expired film, but I also found this—an Olympus Stylus 120 compact camera dating back to 2004.
I have to admit that I had forgotten that I owned this camera—it almost certainly had been a gift from my parents in 2004, when this model came out. But I had probably forgotten about it because I’d also received my first digital camera, a Sony Cybershot, at most a year later in early 2005. (So, for one, thank you so much, my generous, camera-enthusiast parents!) From a quick glance through old piles of photos, I probably put only a few rolls of film through it before picking up my digital point and shoot and never looking back.
From Fall of 2004. I guess I asked someone to use my camera to take a photo of me working? I have no other explanation. Note other signs of the technological times: CRT monitor, wired rolling ball mouse, and LG flip phone.
Also likely Fall 2004. The Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry.
Looking back now, I am kind of amused at the difference a few years makes. I may well have seen this camera in the storage tub in 2013, but at that point, nine years after I’d received the camera, I guess it had not seemed to present a particular value or photographic opportunity that I was interested in exploring more at that time.
Today, with this camera being nearly old enough to vote, I’m much more drawn to it. This is almost certainly influenced by the amount of point-and-shoot film camera hype that’s circulating online nowadays, but (now being a parent) I also appreciate the value of a point-and-shoot camera much more. This isn’t to say that I’m not still guilty of stopping in my tracks to fiddle with camera settings and take a picture, but as moments are fleeting and the amount of other things to be attended to is high, it feels nice to be able to take a camera out and snap a shot, knowing that it will result in a reasonably high quality image with a (now) distinctive film look to it, with minimal intervention on my own part.
The following are a few of the shots I took with the camera, loaded up with Kodak Portra 800 film. Portra 800 is a professional film stock, and is designed to do well in situations with a bit less light (think late afternoon/dusk). Though common wisdom is to overexpose it, I shot it here at box speed, as I didn’t want to fiddle with modifying the film’s DX code to convince it to do otherwise. I’ve only shot with a handful of film stocks, but of those, I do find myself liking Portra 800 a great deal. It can do a good job with skin tones and portrait style photos, but the colors can also be quite saturated and striking, depending on the lighting. I’ve yet to develop a good sense of what look it will express in a given circumstance, but the fact that it will usually do a pretty good job across a range of subject types provides a nice little safety blanket underneath a range of potentially surprising outcomes (and those are what make film an appealing medium to me after all).
The Olympus Stylus 120, for me and for camera history in general, sat at this moment in which mass market photography was starting to shift from film cameras to digital cameras (and it has since shifted further, to digital cameras in phones). I’m very happy with how these shots came out, and am also happy that this camera remained in good operating condition, despite being relatively untouched for nearly two decades!
