this??
this little guy???
it's a gateway drug.
you can run into it at the store and have your interest mildly piqued. then you can buy it for a very reasonable price, because why not? it's just 10 dollars!
and it's that easy. you have the power of a film camera in your hands. a completely separate and wildly different medium than just taking pictures on your phone, a whole new world of things to consider when you run into something cool-looking on the street ("how do I feel about this? is this nice enough to deserve a spot in my limited gallery of shots on the film camera? or is it common enough for me to take a photo with my phone and just move on?"). taking a photo becomes a special occasion, something scarce, something to celebrate. and it could help you work out some feelings about certain subjects which may cross your path. if you find something that you feel isn't worth immortalizing on film, you could realise that you never actually valued it in the first place. on the other hand, you may find things that you had no idea you valued so much!
you realize that you can't delete a film photo. you can't retake it. you must simply advance the roll. and you don't get instant feedback! you have to blindly trust your own judgement, and see if it was fair only at the end.
at the end of this shooting process, it feels like you've been holding your breath for forever. you take it to the developing lab, to finally introduce your film roll to the unforgiving and continuous light of day, as opposed to the hundredth-of-a-second fractions it's seen until now. you may witness your film lab technician ruthlessly smashing your poor little disposable into a million pieces to get that canister out (or you may ask them nicely that they keep it intact because you want to hang onto it as you grew emotionally attached to it while taking pictures with it). and a few days later, you get hit by tremendous delayed gratification. even if the photos are crap, they feel like something honest, something different. it's almost like they capture the soul of the subjects, not just the geometric shapes and lines they're made up of.
my first photo on a disposable camera was of a building right outside the store I got it from, on a really busy street, just about more than a year ago. I'm certain that no matter how many days, months, or years pass, and no matter where I am in the world, I can always look back at that image and feel like I'm right there, I can hear the rumbling of the cars passing by, I can hear the people rushing around, and I can experience that feeling of eagerness from that moment one more time. objectively, it's a very mediocre picture. someone else looking at it may be left absolutely cold and unaffected.
so, after this marvellous experience, you're left kind of empty. no more camera, no more film, it feels like everything is over. and if you're like me, you may experience some sort of withdrawal (just like I said, it's a gateway drug, a trial of all the things you could feel, no strings attached. like having a one-night stand with a film roll), you may start frantically searching online marketplaces for a non-disposable camera to call your own.
in that moment, when you purchase your first proper film camera and hold it in your hands for the first time, you engage into a commitment. from then on, you will shift your perspective a little and look at the things around you a tad differently.