Do you still use film?

I have this Pocket Fujica 350 Zoom that my mom had given me when I was in elementary school. I still have the photos I took with it of my friends on the playground behind my elementary school. The camera is strong. There’s no cap for the lense and after so many years the fear of dropping it is gone. It’s durable and has definitely stood the test of time. It takes a good hunt to find film for it, but when I do, I stick it in, shut the back until it clicks and off I go, or off my husband goes. We took it with us to Japan and then on to Australia and back to Korea with us and snapped a precious few photos here and there.

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Maybe I like film because I can’t check the shot. Maybe I like film because I have to wait and that makes me appreciate the shot even more. Maybe I like film because it’s real and I can touch it. I don’t know what it is, but I like film and getting the pictures developed and remembering where I’ve been and what I’ve seen weeks or even months after the fact. Appreciation… and the grain.

The pictures have been developed and the memories come flooding back. I took them to get developed and pick up some more film only to find out the shop I got the film from didn’t have anymore and wouldn’t be getting anymore. They can develop the film thank goodness, but I can’t get anymore from them. I find it sad that I have a camera that still works perfectly well yet it’s so hard to find the film to make it work. The first few shops I went to here told me the film wasn’t anywhere in the country and they couldn’t even develop it even if I had it. I took photography courses in school and I can’t understand why they can’t develop it if they can develop other films. They told me their machine wouldn’t be able to work with my film. I understand there are machines for everything these days, but if you can’t take the film from the spindle yourself and figure out how to develop it if that’s what your shop does then do you really know what you’re doing in the first place? Have you just purchased the machines and hope they work? You can imagine my surprise and subsequent excitement when I found a shop with film in stock and available for purchase in my own neighborhood. And now as quickly as I found it, it’s gone again.

If anyone knows where to find this film in Seoul, please please please let me know.