When she and her husband Luis went overseas, she took a film camera.

She had thousands of digital images from a previous trip she didn't even look at, and this was her way of slowing down, deliberately committing to memory only things she thought special.

Next, our daughter Bek showed up to the Biggs Christmas pyjama party with a film camera.

And a polaroid camera.

That day phones played second fiddle to retro technology.

It got me wondering.

Why are our kids (grown adults) now shooting film?

I visited my old camera shelf to find my first SLR camera, a Pentax ME Super bought new in 1981.

There were two, the second belonged to my dad.

One appeared to be working and still had a film inside.

It took only a moment to rediscover what I used to really love about photography.

The camera was small and light, the viewfinder bright.

Besides having to consciously work out camera settings and focus and depth of field, was the thought:

This click will cost me two dollars.

Therefore, do I really want this angle and background?

Or do I want to move a little to the left, right, up, or down?

Is there anything in the frame I don't want to see in my final photo?

When our son Jamie asked if I had a new year's resolution, I said yes.

I was going to shoot a frame a day with the film camera.

Day 1.

Hurrying back from Burnie after a shift for The Advocate, a moss-covered orange VW Beetle in a roadside junkyard caught my eye.

Well, I tell a lie.

I had seen it a hundred times before, and even stopped to photograph it.

But now was an excuse to use the "good" camera.

It sounds like I am Ansel Adams using a 10x8 inch camera to reproduce a beautiful landscape.

And for a moment I felt like I was.

No longer was I shooting this angle, that angle, the other angle, and choosing the best later.

No, select the best angle before committing.

But I am kind of cheating.

Further up the road were hay bales in front of an old cottage and I took my digital camera for a walk at the Discover Deloraine sign.

So what I'm getting on film isn't my only photo-fix for the day.

Day 2.

One green-eyed Tuxedo cat reclining on a blue floral bedspread with late afternoon light filtering through the curtains - focus carefully at f2, and click.

Day 3.

With the i30 idling in the summer heat with the air-con whirring, I walked a few metres along Illawarra Road to carefully compose photo number three, dry yellow paddocks, a shearing shed, the Great Western Tiers on the horizon, and a beautiful distant thunderstorm billowing under a blue sky.

Rule of thirds or symmetry?

Barbed wire fence in or out?

Focus carefully...

Click.

But no!

The viewfinder went black as the camera jammed.

I found a You-tube repair tutorial and to my delight, the shutter clicked into place, the mirror flipped down, the winder freed.

It was all working again.

Better still, I did the same to the second camera and it came back to life too.

But it had another problem.

It would not stop winding.

Day 4:

With the confidence gained from fixing the camera, and following a tutorial to the letter, colleague Paul Scambler and I set about dismantling the second ME Super,

Did we succeed?

Yes and no.

The camera no longer had the infinite winding problem - it was now completely jammed.

That evening, while cycling home from work, I found the old Mount Pleasant gateposts standing together in a construction zone like a group of brick Daleks in a conference planning the destruction of earth.

This was worth committing to film, I thought, and there was click number four.

Day 5:

A trip to Rowella to two wineries for work, followed by lunch at Beauty Point, but no opportunity for a film photo - I just wasn't looking properly.

It was the red and white flowers in a pot at our front door that caught my eye for today.

Days 6 - 9.

A sunset, a thunder storm, a self portrait in the mirror, and a rose were subjects for the next few days, all carefully and thoughtfully composed and metered.

Day 10:

I knew an old cart wheel near the South Esk River would make a good photo, and while on a sunset walk around Hadspen, it did just that.

But disaster!

The camera went black again, but this time there was no Lazarus miracle.

Dead it remained.

Day 11:

While my dad and I had bought identical cameras in 1981, he and his dad had done the same 20 years before that.

The Praktica IV B was a 1961 model, and sitting on my old camera shelf were two of them.

The cloth shutter on one was plainly faulty.

But the second appeared to be working.

So I put in the film from the Pentax, counted the 24 or so frames with my hand over the lens, and went for a walk to shoot the rest of the film.

Day 12:

The negatives came back from Camera House quite dark.

Not unexpected, the film was a good 20 years old.

The first dozen or so images were from 2006, of a long forgotten trip to Bridport.

Then came my one photo a day project - and there was just blank film.

Which depicts perfectly what it was like to have to wait two weeks to find the photos didn't work out as hoped.

The last part of the film were images from the 1961 Praktica IV B.

And every image worked.

One side of the negative was brighter than the other and there were delightful random light leaks I just couldn't pay for.

Perhaps the shutter needed to get a run up to do its job, seeing as it was made in the sixties.

I know that feeling.

My one film photo a day project has arrived mid-January with no photos to show.

So I'll shelve that idea for now.

But I am keen to keep shooting film.