There I was, trudging through the Oklahoma plains with my Pentax 67 strapped around my neck like some medieval penance device. This isn’t a camera—it’s a relic, a hulking beast of 1970s engineering that handles like a Nikon F3HP on steroids but weighs as much as a boat anchor fresh off the Titanic. I swear, every step I take with this thing is a full-body workout. My doctor at the OKC Indian Clinic sends me thank-you notes for the steady business.
But oh, the thrill of it! Walking around with this oversized film camera is like parading a pet dinosaur through town. People stare, kids point, and I just grin, pretending I’m Ansel Adams reincarnated—except Ansel never had to explain to a curious bystander why his camera sounds like a guillotine dropping. You see, the Pentax 67’s shutter is no subtle whisper. It’s a seismic event. You press the button, and THUNK—a noise so massive it scatters birds, rattles windows, and makes you wonder if you’ve just fired a cannon instead of taking a picture. It’s the kind of sound that says, “I mean business,” even if the only business I’m doing is photographing a rusty windmill or a cow that’s already bored of my antics.
The real comedy, though, begins when I get home. Developing film in my kitchen sink is less “fine art process” and more “science experiment gone rogue.” It’s me, hunched over like a mad alchemist, surrounded by a witches’ brew of chemicals, praying I don’t spill fixer on Kay’s favorite granite countertop. The sink becomes a battlefield—me versus the film, armed with a Jobo tank and a timer on my phone that beeps like it’s mocking my life choices. One wrong move, and I’m tossing another ruined roll of Kodak TMAX 100 in the trash, cursing under my breath as Kay glances up from her iPhone, unimpressed.
Then comes the scanning. Oh, the scanning. It’s like trying to herd molasses uphill in January. I sit there, coaxing each frame into my computer, pixel by painstaking pixel, while my modern mirrorless Nikon Zf camera sulks on the shelf, whispering, “I could’ve done this in ten seconds, you masochist.” The Pentax 67 doesn’t care about efficiency. It’s a diva, demanding I manually focus its finicky lens, load and unload film like I’m threading a needle in a windstorm, and guess exposures with nothing but a light meter and a gut feeling. It’s a dance of agony, a marathon of patience, a Sisyphean task where the boulder is a 4-pound camera and the hill is my own stubborn nostalgia.
And yet… there’s something about it. That THUNK isn’t just noise—it’s a heartbeat, a pulse of creation that no silent digital shutter can mimic. The weight of the Pentax 67 isn’t just a burden—it’s a tether to a time when photography felt like wrestling a wild beast into submission. Every scratched negative, every chemical-stained finger, every hour spent squinting at a light table—it’s a badge of honor, a love letter to a craft that refuses to die quietly.
Sure, I could grab my sleek mirrorless Nikon Zf and breeze through a shoot like a tech-savvy wizard. But where’s the story in that? The Pentax 67 is my cantankerous old friend, a grizzled companion that turns every outing into an adventure and every photo into a trophy. The agony of keeping this hobby alive is like panning for gold in a muddy river—backbreaking, maddening, and occasionally absurd, but every now and then, you strike a nugget of pure joy. And that’s why my love for shooting film never really fades. It’s a glorious, ridiculous, THUNK-filled mess—and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
