Finishing one roll a month instead of carrying three
Whenever I packed a small bag with two extra rolls of film—one fast, one slow—I ended up spending half my walk wondering whether the light was about to change enough to justify rewinding the current cassette early. Usually I finished none of them, or I fired off the last ten frames of a roll at parked cars just to get it out of the camera before dark.
This winter I started leaving the house with only the roll already loaded in the body and nothing in my coat pocket. Thirty-six frames across three or four weekend walks is roughly nine pictures a week. Knowing there is no backup roll in my pocket stops me from taking the polite, half-interested shots I used to take just to warm up.
When a single cassette stays in the camera for three weeks, the contact sheet also becomes a small calendar. Frame four is the rainy Tuesday outside the hardware store; frame nineteen is two Sundays later when the sun finally came out. I like the sheet better when it holds a whole month instead of a single restless afternoon.