Hot take: hitting roll 100 on my cheap point-and-shoot felt bigger than my first darkroom print

I've been shooting film for about 3 years now, mostly thrift store cameras, and this month I finally developed my 100th roll. It was a messed up roll too, half the frames got this weird blue light leak from my Olympus Infinity that I still can't fix. Did anyone else here hit a random number that made you feel like you actually had this hobby dialed in, or am I just overthinking a pile of failed photos?

3 comments

3 Comments

jordanr8926d ago

Hit 1000 miles on my bike last summer and it hit me the same way. Not because 1000 is some magic number, but because somewhere around mile 800 I stopped thinking about my knees and started just feeling the road shift under the tires. It's like your brain builds these shortcuts in the background without telling you. Same thing happened when I started cooking - I used to follow recipes line by line, now I just know when something smells right or needs a pinch more salt. Those numbers aren't really about the count, they're about the moment you finally trust yourself enough to stop second guessing.

oscar39026d ago

My 45th roll was the one that clicked for me, literally the whole roll came out sharp and exposed perfectly for the first time. It's weird how these random milestones hit you, but I've noticed this pattern everywhere in life now. Like when you make the same coffee order 50 times and suddenly you know exactly how much foam you want without thinking about it. Or driving a route so many times that you stop looking at signs and just feel where to turn. Those little numbers are just markers for when your brain finally stops forcing the process and just does it naturally.

richard_west526d ago

The "stopped thinking about my knees" line got me because I absolutely know that feeling, except for me it's realizing I've been holding my breath for 30 seconds while trying to advance film in a dark bag. My milestone was roll 47. It was also the roll where I accidentally opened the back of my camera mid-roll and lost 12 frames, but hey, at least I learned something. Your brain building shortcuts sounds nice until those shortcuts tell you to just wing the development times and you end up with 36 completely empty negatives.