jandavid.me

Trailer with Spoilers

tldr: I’m doing a photo challenge in 2025: shooting at least one roll of film every month to stay creative and consistent.

The Origin Story

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to take photos. As a child, I would watch my father use his Canon SLR, and I couldn’t wait to play with it—I wanted one of my own. When I received my first camera—a Voigtländer film point-and-shoot—for my ninth birthday, I became a photographer. And I’ve never really stopped being one since.

I was always the guy with a camera on school trips, birthdays, and family parties. At one point, I even considered studying something photography-related. That didn’t happen, but I never stopped taking pictures. I became the one people asked about photos from the latest social event. For a while, photography felt more like a chore than a hobby, and I took fewer pictures, often just using my phone. But a few years ago, I felt the urge to re-embrace photography. Exploring new genres and cameras, I’ve reached a point where I’m taking more photos than ever—both digital and film.

With Great Cameras Comes Great Responsibility

One of the reasons I’m shooting more these days is that I try to keep things interesting.
Last year, I set myself a challenge: to shoot exclusively with a 35mm focal length (or 23mm on APS-C). It worked out wonderfully, and I fell in love with 35mm. For 2025, I considered switching to another focal length, but I’ve grown so comfortable with 35mm that changing it again felt like an unnecessary disruption.

Then I heard Toby Baier talking about his medium-format film challenge on Realitätsabgleich. I borrowed the idea for my own project in 2025: My goal is to shoot at least one roll of film every month. I can shoot more, but I’m not allowed to “make up” for a missed month by shooting two rolls in January and skipping February. The minimum is one roll every month.

Last year, I shot more than one roll per month on average, but it’s easier to take photos in the summer or on vacation. This challenge is about building consistency—encouraging myself to shoot even when the weather isn’t great or inspiration is harder to come by. Hopefully, it will make me a better photographer. Worst case? I’ll simply take photos without improving much. But even then, I’ll have been creative.

Post-Credit Scene

For January, I’m already at 1.5 rolls of film, so it’s a good start! Right now, I’m shooting HP5 with a yellow filter, but that’s not a requirement for the challenge—I’m free to experiment with different films whenever I like.

I plan to share the results on my website throughout the year.

I shot my first roll of Harman Phoenix 200 throughout August and September. These are a few street shots from uptown Frankfurt, the Messe area, my home district Ginnheim, as well as Bockenheim and Höchst.

The results turned out better than I expected. After watching several film YouTubers review this stock, I was worried the colors would lean too much toward red, and that the contrast might be too harsh for midday shots. There is a noticeable red tint, and some halation, but I think it’s still acceptable. This film works well if you’re going for that specific look or effect, but it’s not ideal for everyday or vacation photography — at least not for me. I do like how the colors of the sky came out, though.

Overall, it’s a decent first attempt by Ilford/Harman at color film. I hope they continue to develop and improve it further.

| Shot on Canon P / 35mm / Harman Phoenix 200

In times when one does not want to use Chrome or other Chromium-based browsers, and the new and trendy browsers like Arc are Chromium-based, the choice is quite limited—especially if you want proper extensions and a design that doesn’t suck. So, Firefox is out because it looks terrible. But Gecko is fast and reliable. In the search for a Gecko-based browser that tries to be a bit more modern and doesn’t look terrible, I stumbled upon Zen Browser. It’s basically “just” a Firefox fork with a nice UI that adapts modern ideas for tab management. It’s still in alpha and sometimes has bugs, but it works very well, and it’s currently my default browser on both my private and work computers.

Shot on Canon P | #Canon 35mm Lens | #Fujifilm #Fujicolor 200

#filmisnotdead #believeinfilm #rangefinder

Shot on Canon P | #Canon 35mm Lens | #Fujifilm #Fujicolor 200

#filmisnotdead #believeinfilm #rangefinder

Shot on Canon P | #Canon 35mm Lens | #Fujifilm #Fujicolor 200

#filmisnotdead #believeinfilm #rangefinder

This Picture was taken on a very cold but sunny Tuesday morning in May on the Münchner Straße in Frankfurt am Main with an iPhone X using its 50mm-style lens. I used a preset-filter to give the image a little bit more warmth than the camera originaly did. But I feel the colors are pretty much like they were on this day.

(This was originally posted 15.05.2019 on my old blog.)