You're a brave man taking on film in a digital world. If nothing else, it makes you realise how difficult it was to get a decent result 30 to 40 years ago. My first acceptable shot using film was of the Carina nebula. I can still remember sitting at the illuminated eyepiece of my guidescope for 30mins, gently nudging the RA and DEC buttons to keep the guide star centred in a block of the printed grid of the eyepiece. Tedious work and not knowing for weeks sometimes if your guiding and exposure was going to achieve a successful result. Fortunately in my case it did. Well done on giving this a go, like you said, at least you can see some shape and colour.
