For those of you who enjoy or are planning to enjoy film shooting this year, happy new year! Film is down, no doubt about it, but NOT out. Kodak is still inovating and making new film, it's just doing it slower pace than in the past. Fuji too has released some great new film products.
For those of you who want to try film again, or for the first time, do this:
Buy a 35mm roll of Fuji Reala
Use a manual-focus camera with a 50mm lens, such as the Canon AE-1 Program or Minolta X-700. All you need to do is focus and shoot.
Have the roll developed by a good lab, not a quickie drugstore, and have them also do a CD for ya.
Share your results on pbase or flickr or smugmug or whatever. Show off your beauties!
Total cost is less than a hundred US dollars, and maybe, just maybe, you'll like it. Reala is great stuff.
This combination is a great starter setup. If you're not aware of what film can do, this will let you know. And from there, there's a whole new world to explore of films, papers, alternative processes, and film sizes.