I purchased my first “real” camera in 1986. Still in high school, I confidently walked into our local Woolco store, a wad of saved cash in hand, and purchased a Minolta Maxxum 7000.

Over the years, I’ve owned countless cameras. But I learned the basics about photography shooting 35-millimetre film with that Minolta. Today, I’m fortunate to work as a commercial photographer with access to the latest professional digital cameras, but film photography still holds a special place in my heart.

In early 2021, I received an assignment to photograph a young couple named Brent and Kayla, new owners of the historic Earltown General Store. The store had been a fixture at the crossroads in Earltown, N.S., since the 1890s. Not long before the assignment, I acquired an old, beautiful Korona large format camera, a huge wooden camera almost as old as the Earltown store.

In my mind, a match made in heaven!

I’d do the bulk of photography on the shoot with my digital camera, but also make time to take at least one photo at the old store with the old camera. Shooting large-format film with an old wooden view camera is time consuming. My digital camera is often handheld, shooting five to seven sharply focused high-resolution photos per second. I can see instantly on my screen if I’ve got the shot I need.

But the old Korona is as bulky as a mid-sized microwave and so heavy it’s mounted on a large tripod. I open the lens, allowing light to pass through the body of the camera, focusing and composing the reversed and inverted image on a ground glass at the back of the camera. I then close the lens, and set the shutter speed and aperture, after measuring the light in the scene.

I place a holder and sheet of film where the ground glass was, and then remove a “darkslide,” readying the sheet of film. I cock the shutter and, with a click, take the photograph. Failing to complete (or missing) any of these steps can cause the photo to be unusable and waste a sheet of film. And you still must safely unload the film and develop the negative!

When it all works, it’s a photographic experience like no other. So, on a sunny May day in 2021, Brent and Kayla stood across the street from their 130-year-old store, and I took a photograph of them with my 120-year-old camera. Film magic.