We always had cheap cigarettes in Romania...
That was until we entered the European Union and prices had to be slowly adapted. We still have cheaper cigarettes but the difference isn't that huge anymore.
When I visited France for the first time, I spent a quarter of the money I had on me on cigarette packs. The second time when I visited it I've been in an exchange group in high school and for a week I was a small God inside that school. That was because I brought from home 10 packs of Marlboro. The kids that were smoking there became my best friends because I was sharing cigarettes like I was a millionaire. With the 10 packs I had on me I think I could have bought a Ferrari, some cheap sluts and rent the Royal Apartment in some luxurious hotel downtown.
Yesterday I went with the kid to some park and my best friend came along. He's close to leaving the country, in search for better opportunities (or so he thinks, let's see) and we had something like 2 hours to talk, discuss, fight (like we always do, on different subjects) and take some shots. I know him since we were teenagers.
He rolls his own cigarettes now. It's cheaper and gives one the impression that he smokes less. I don't think that's true and the fact that the filter, on the rolled ones, is a mere cardboard piece, in contrast to the high tech filters they put in cigarettes nowadays, gets more smoke inside the lungs.
I'm starting to use more and more the B&W presets in Lightroom, especially the VSCO ones and I'm trying to read more about each type of film that each preset tries to emulate. Somehow digital photography is different in many ways from the classical film BUT the more I edit, the more I realise I have to start taking photos with the preset I want to use in my mind. Exposure time seems to be really important as the digital manages to keep track of how many photons are hitting the sensor in the given amount and recording in RAW will translate that to Lightroom. The preset will try to work in the same way those photons would've impressed the film and reciprocity is taken into account by Adobe and their Lightroom. So shooting randomly, only to check back on the camera screen and more or less seem ok, is not enough. The adding of grain and its finesse is something each photographer should look for, customly, in their shots even from the beginning and planning of the shot.
One of my favourite presets is the one of FUJI Neopan 400 film emulator. It strives for the 400 ISO but while the digital photography I take (especially outside) is made way under that ISO (because I'm an underexposure freak that ruin a lot of shots because of that) the result I get while developing digitally is a faded shot, with quite a large (but smooth) grain. The Neopan 400 was especially used for photojournalism because of this ISO capability, making for clear B&W shots when the exposure was the correct one but when it's underexposed and pretty under-contrasted, it gives this silky-milky film cover on top of the shot.
And I like that.