Recording a Town Hall Meeting on Film

After a bit of hesitation about bringing a noisy film SLR camera to an event in a tight indoor space, I’m glad I got over that hesitation when I decided to attend a recent town hall meeting hosted by one of my state legislators. For a little over an hour, I planted myself at the back of the room as both an interested citizen and a curious amateur photographer.

With a roll of Ilford HP5 film loaded in my Nikon F and my 135mm f/3.5 Nikkor lens set almost wide open to f/4—for some reason, I’m always a little reluctant to shoot at apertures that don’t represent full stops—I metered the scene with my Photomic FTn viewfinder. To my dismay, I quickly realized that I had to resort to a rather slow 1/30 sec. shutter speed even though I was shooting on faster ASA 400-speed film in a well-lit space. For handheld telephoto work, I immediately knew that would be a problem.

I really struggled with positioning my body in such a way that I could keep myself as steady as possible. Chalk it up to experience. Although I’m not a big fan of it, I think I may get a roll or two of Ilford Delta 3200 to have on hand just for such an occasion in the future.

Although there were a good number of exposures that were hopelessly fuzzy and unsalvageable, I’m glad to see that not all of them were unusable.

Technical concerns aside, it was exhilarating to shoot an event like that on film. With foreground attendees intentionally out of focus, I looked for moments when the legislator was expressing himself with various hand gestures.

As vain as this may seem, I confess to loving the appearance of an old-school press photographer. And as obnoxious as it may have been, the sound of my Nikon F further added to the experience. Although I continued to worry about whether I was “that guy” who was annoying people—I actually heard the sound of my shutter echo off the front wall and back to me as I photographed the event—I was left with the impression that it wasn’t that big of a deal at all.