What hobby seems boring to most people but is actually fascinating if you dive into it?

Bluetreefrog@lemmy.worldmod to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 247 points –

Tell us why we should unexpectedly come to love your hobby.

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Film photography. With smartphones having taken over the roll of point and shoots and covering the majority of people's photography needs, it's quite a different experience breaking out a half century old camera. Everything is more tactile, your shots are finite, and the result is a 100% determined by your decisions. Different films produce different results, and if you get into developing your own film you get to play mad chemist in the bathroom.

There's a learning curve, but if you're already into photography and understand the basics it's really not that hard. Labs still exist to develop for you if you'd rather not go down that rabbit hole. The results may surprise you!

I started to get deep into film photography but when I realized I was researching hospital grade HEPA filters so I could put a darkroom into the bedroom closet I decided I needed to take a step back.

I love film photography and the fact that I recently moved a very short distance from the Kodak film plant in NY is slowly drawing me back into it.

I wonder if the local community college has a dark room I could rent.

I mostly shoot with a DSLR (or did, the pandemic has apparently killed a lot of my enthusiasm for that particular hobby). But I have occasionally picked up a film camera just to play around. It always takes me about half the roll to stop checking the results on the display on the back of the camera...

It's like the odd time I drive an automatic after decades with a manual ... always mashing the floor and popping it in neutral by accident.