- Joined
- Sep 25, 2010
- Messages
- 12
- Format
- 35mm
It’s almost a quarter of a century since I first started on my photographic journey. Over that time I’ve explored and enjoyed a number of different formats, both film and digital. Having ‘grown up’ with film, and really enjoyed darkroom printing (both colour and black and white) from my earliest days as a photographer, and having seen some of my favourite 4x5 slides printed as Cibachromes, I always held a slightly sceptical view of digital capture and printed output. I guess my experiences sort of naturally but entirely unreasonably led me to assume that inkjet prints from digital files captured on a DSLR would be crappy compared to the handcrafted prints made from 6x6 or 4x5 negatives or positives in a traditional darkroom setting.
Similarly, until very recently, I had always assumed that if I wanted to make a satisfying black and white print, I needed to start from a well exposed and well developed photographic negative and work in the darkroom. Don’t get me wrong: digital capture has been an important and very satisfying part of my photography from at least 2005 - but until very recently (when I finally started to mess around with RAW files in my very antiquated version of Photoshop from 2007) I had always thought of digital as an exclusively colour medium. Another recent revelation concerns flash photography: after settling down to family life with 2 young kids, my days of gritty street photography or landscape work in far flung locations are over for the time being. Working indoors I finally had to get to grips with flash - and goodness me has that transition been made less painful or intimidating thanks to digital.
I feel like the guy who has been under a rock for the last 10 years but I think I am now alerted to a few things that much of the rest of the world has presumably known for quite some time:
1. inkjet / giclee prints from digital files rock!
I’m not sure why I harboured such a prejudice for so long against pigment / ink prints. Perhaps it was the slightly pretentious ‘giclee’ nomenclature. Maybee I imagined that squirting drops of ink on top of the paper could never rival the magic of a colour image revealed from within the paper by some miracle of chemistry. Whatever the explanation, I was wrong. Inkjet prints I’m making now from digital files (from a variety of different digital cameras – Leica D-Lux 1, Nikon D700 and D750, Ricoh GR) really just look vibrant and marvellous. And the paper choices are wonderful too. My colour analog printing experience was limited to the Kodak RA4 papers that I printed my colour negative work on circa 2007-11 (plus the Cibas which I did not print myself). Now printing colour on heavy weight baryta papers has been a complete revelation. As far as colour printing goes, anything I could do in the colour darkroom I can do digitally with faster, more consistent and very high quality results.
2. Raw files provide immense creative potential, especially for black and white.
I’m by no means a technophobe but for some reason I had eschewed raw ‘processing’. As far as I dabbled in digital, I shot jpeg. Again, perhaps born of a sort of snobbery which I’m almost ashamed to admit, I think I probably looked down my nose at the digital photographers sitting in front of their computers instead of getting their hands dirty in a smelly darkroom. Surely all that computer time could not represent ‘real’ photography (whatever the heck that is)?
Now that I start to shoot more raw, I am finally realising that I don’t need to put too much store in the jpeg that I see on the back screen of a digital camera. Shooting film in tricky, high key lighting still delivers images that give me goosebumps – but I now understand that a disappointing image on the back of my DSLR does not really mean anything and certainly does not represent the ability of a modern DSLR to capture a wide range of subject brightness. That back screen jpeg is just the camera software’s interpretation of the scene – and with a little time and effort I can draw out my own (often more pleasing) interpretation from a raw file. Black and white is where I really see the greatest potential for me here. A series of black and white family portraits I have printed recently, starting with raw files from a D750, have taken my breath away.
3. Modern digital sensors deliver prints that in many cases exceed the quality achievable from medium format film.
The enlargements I make from my D700 and D750 files, to my eye, lack nothing stood next to darkroom prints (colour and black and white) from negs made on my Mamiya 6, which was my main camera from 2007 to 2012. Even 40 x 40 cm englargements from a 12MP D700 simply astonish. There is a tonal ‘smoothness’ which is very redolent of medium format prints, especially at smaller enlargements. It’s night and day different from prints from 35mm.
4. Flash isn’t (that) hard
Necessity is the mother of invention. Photographing my family (often indoors) with a DSLR, I realised I had to get to grips with flash. For years (especially as someone most excited by candid street photography) I eschewed flash. I saw no need for it for the type of pictures I wanted to take. Finally encountering a need, I discovered it’s not really that hard. Aperture controls my ambient light and with fiddling flash power (or leaving it to the TTL meter) plus working with bounce and diffusers delivers some really pleasing results. And a DSLR makes the process of trial and error really cost free.
5. It’s all good (with the possible exception of hardware / software)!
This is not meant to be a film vs digital rant. It’s just a candid admission by someone who would have always professed to favour one medium, that the other medium can really deliver the goods. I will always shoot film. I can’t see myself returning to large format, but 35mm and 120 are still in my arsenal. I suspect this is true only for black and white though. The prints I’m making from colour digital files these days do give me real pause as to whether it is worth paying the exorbitant sums now demanded to work with emulsions like Portra 400 (fantastic film though it is).
Perhaps the only fly in my digital ointment right now concerns computer hardware and software. I’m typing this on a 2012 Macbook Pro which I upgraded circa 2018 with a large SSD and max RAM. It’s a perfectly capable machine for all that I want to do. Photoshop CS3 (which cost me a small fortune in 2007) and Adobe Camera Raw work like a charm. Yet if I were minded to switch to Lightroom / current Photoshop, I would have to shell out a small fortune to upgrade my hardware. No thanks.
Such is my current enthusiasm for digital, working with my Nikon D750, I would very much like to get a mirrorless body so that I could shoot some of my old Minolta MD lenses digitally. A Sony A7 perhaps. The only thing that gives me pause on that front is wondering whether my computer and hardware software could even cope with the files from high MP contemporary mirrorless cameras.
As a glasses wearer, I’m also not sure how I would get on with an electronic viewfinder. The best viewfinder I’ve ever looked through remains that of my Nikon F6 which I have been enjoying since 2010 and will never let go. The best rangefinder viewfinder I used was that of my Mamiya 6. (I was so accustomed to that rangefinder that when I dipped my toes in Leica M waters briefly circa 2011, I was thoroughly disappointed by the experience – I found working with an M6 finder like squinting through a key hole and really couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about).
So, for the time being, I feel enthused to really focus on extracting the very most that I can from the two digital cameras currently in my arsenal: my D750 and my Ricoh GR (the latter now more than 10 years old and always attached to the shoulder strap of my pack on summer mountaineering trips). With the results I’m seeing from this already comparatively antiquated digital kit, I really don’t feel much need to explore the latest and greatest. Rather I want to squeeze the most (in terms of prints) out of what I’ve already got.
6. I sold some of my film gear for peanuts at the wrong time!
Around the time I got a D700 in 2012 I let go of my Mamiya 6 (with the 50mm and 150mm lenses). I genuinely miss that camera but balk at the prices now demanded for them. I paid EUR 700 for the camera (plus 50mm lens) in 2007 and sold for rather more than that in 2012. Goodness knows what it would cost these days to get back into a Mamiya 6 setup.
Equally, I’m astonished at the meteoric prices of Leica gear these days. I briefly owned an M6 0.58 from 2010 to 2012, with a few lenses (including a very nice 28mm ASPH). I sold my M6 for marginally more than I paid for it. I just did not get on with the M bodies or viewfinders. But the prices commanded today are really quite wild. In a sense I feel sorry for younger photographers – the ‘barrier to entry’ to some systems is higher than it’s ever been. I was able to cross that barrier for Leica (only to discover it was not for me) and for the Mamya (to realise it really was for me).
By the same token, in 2008 I was able to assemble a large format kit for relatively modest amounts of money. As I got deeper into the format I was able to upgrade from a Shen Hao to a very splendid Ebony 45 camera that accompanied me on trips to places like Death Valley during a two year stint living and working in the US. Today, even cameras from the likes of Shen Hao seem to command prices far higher than I remember from circa 2008.
So, while I apparently offloaded a lot of my film gear at the wrong time, I’m certainly glad that I held onto my Nikon and Minolta 35mm SLR rigs. Above all the F6 and FM3a, both of which I’m using regularly for well over a decade now and which are really just phenomenal fun to shoot. And the Minolta system is kind of like my spiritual home, having started with an X700 and 50mm 1.7 all the way back in 1998. To this day, while I prefer my Nikon bodies, there is no question that I far prefer the look that I get from those beautiful old Minolta lenses.
Anyway, all of this is rather a long winded way of me acknowledging that I have seen the digital light but it does not blind me to the creative potential of film either. It’s all good.
Similarly, until very recently, I had always assumed that if I wanted to make a satisfying black and white print, I needed to start from a well exposed and well developed photographic negative and work in the darkroom. Don’t get me wrong: digital capture has been an important and very satisfying part of my photography from at least 2005 - but until very recently (when I finally started to mess around with RAW files in my very antiquated version of Photoshop from 2007) I had always thought of digital as an exclusively colour medium. Another recent revelation concerns flash photography: after settling down to family life with 2 young kids, my days of gritty street photography or landscape work in far flung locations are over for the time being. Working indoors I finally had to get to grips with flash - and goodness me has that transition been made less painful or intimidating thanks to digital.
I feel like the guy who has been under a rock for the last 10 years but I think I am now alerted to a few things that much of the rest of the world has presumably known for quite some time:
1. inkjet / giclee prints from digital files rock!
I’m not sure why I harboured such a prejudice for so long against pigment / ink prints. Perhaps it was the slightly pretentious ‘giclee’ nomenclature. Maybee I imagined that squirting drops of ink on top of the paper could never rival the magic of a colour image revealed from within the paper by some miracle of chemistry. Whatever the explanation, I was wrong. Inkjet prints I’m making now from digital files (from a variety of different digital cameras – Leica D-Lux 1, Nikon D700 and D750, Ricoh GR) really just look vibrant and marvellous. And the paper choices are wonderful too. My colour analog printing experience was limited to the Kodak RA4 papers that I printed my colour negative work on circa 2007-11 (plus the Cibas which I did not print myself). Now printing colour on heavy weight baryta papers has been a complete revelation. As far as colour printing goes, anything I could do in the colour darkroom I can do digitally with faster, more consistent and very high quality results.
2. Raw files provide immense creative potential, especially for black and white.
I’m by no means a technophobe but for some reason I had eschewed raw ‘processing’. As far as I dabbled in digital, I shot jpeg. Again, perhaps born of a sort of snobbery which I’m almost ashamed to admit, I think I probably looked down my nose at the digital photographers sitting in front of their computers instead of getting their hands dirty in a smelly darkroom. Surely all that computer time could not represent ‘real’ photography (whatever the heck that is)?
Now that I start to shoot more raw, I am finally realising that I don’t need to put too much store in the jpeg that I see on the back screen of a digital camera. Shooting film in tricky, high key lighting still delivers images that give me goosebumps – but I now understand that a disappointing image on the back of my DSLR does not really mean anything and certainly does not represent the ability of a modern DSLR to capture a wide range of subject brightness. That back screen jpeg is just the camera software’s interpretation of the scene – and with a little time and effort I can draw out my own (often more pleasing) interpretation from a raw file. Black and white is where I really see the greatest potential for me here. A series of black and white family portraits I have printed recently, starting with raw files from a D750, have taken my breath away.
3. Modern digital sensors deliver prints that in many cases exceed the quality achievable from medium format film.
The enlargements I make from my D700 and D750 files, to my eye, lack nothing stood next to darkroom prints (colour and black and white) from negs made on my Mamiya 6, which was my main camera from 2007 to 2012. Even 40 x 40 cm englargements from a 12MP D700 simply astonish. There is a tonal ‘smoothness’ which is very redolent of medium format prints, especially at smaller enlargements. It’s night and day different from prints from 35mm.
4. Flash isn’t (that) hard
Necessity is the mother of invention. Photographing my family (often indoors) with a DSLR, I realised I had to get to grips with flash. For years (especially as someone most excited by candid street photography) I eschewed flash. I saw no need for it for the type of pictures I wanted to take. Finally encountering a need, I discovered it’s not really that hard. Aperture controls my ambient light and with fiddling flash power (or leaving it to the TTL meter) plus working with bounce and diffusers delivers some really pleasing results. And a DSLR makes the process of trial and error really cost free.
5. It’s all good (with the possible exception of hardware / software)!
This is not meant to be a film vs digital rant. It’s just a candid admission by someone who would have always professed to favour one medium, that the other medium can really deliver the goods. I will always shoot film. I can’t see myself returning to large format, but 35mm and 120 are still in my arsenal. I suspect this is true only for black and white though. The prints I’m making from colour digital files these days do give me real pause as to whether it is worth paying the exorbitant sums now demanded to work with emulsions like Portra 400 (fantastic film though it is).
Perhaps the only fly in my digital ointment right now concerns computer hardware and software. I’m typing this on a 2012 Macbook Pro which I upgraded circa 2018 with a large SSD and max RAM. It’s a perfectly capable machine for all that I want to do. Photoshop CS3 (which cost me a small fortune in 2007) and Adobe Camera Raw work like a charm. Yet if I were minded to switch to Lightroom / current Photoshop, I would have to shell out a small fortune to upgrade my hardware. No thanks.
Such is my current enthusiasm for digital, working with my Nikon D750, I would very much like to get a mirrorless body so that I could shoot some of my old Minolta MD lenses digitally. A Sony A7 perhaps. The only thing that gives me pause on that front is wondering whether my computer and hardware software could even cope with the files from high MP contemporary mirrorless cameras.
As a glasses wearer, I’m also not sure how I would get on with an electronic viewfinder. The best viewfinder I’ve ever looked through remains that of my Nikon F6 which I have been enjoying since 2010 and will never let go. The best rangefinder viewfinder I used was that of my Mamiya 6. (I was so accustomed to that rangefinder that when I dipped my toes in Leica M waters briefly circa 2011, I was thoroughly disappointed by the experience – I found working with an M6 finder like squinting through a key hole and really couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about).
So, for the time being, I feel enthused to really focus on extracting the very most that I can from the two digital cameras currently in my arsenal: my D750 and my Ricoh GR (the latter now more than 10 years old and always attached to the shoulder strap of my pack on summer mountaineering trips). With the results I’m seeing from this already comparatively antiquated digital kit, I really don’t feel much need to explore the latest and greatest. Rather I want to squeeze the most (in terms of prints) out of what I’ve already got.
6. I sold some of my film gear for peanuts at the wrong time!
Around the time I got a D700 in 2012 I let go of my Mamiya 6 (with the 50mm and 150mm lenses). I genuinely miss that camera but balk at the prices now demanded for them. I paid EUR 700 for the camera (plus 50mm lens) in 2007 and sold for rather more than that in 2012. Goodness knows what it would cost these days to get back into a Mamiya 6 setup.
Equally, I’m astonished at the meteoric prices of Leica gear these days. I briefly owned an M6 0.58 from 2010 to 2012, with a few lenses (including a very nice 28mm ASPH). I sold my M6 for marginally more than I paid for it. I just did not get on with the M bodies or viewfinders. But the prices commanded today are really quite wild. In a sense I feel sorry for younger photographers – the ‘barrier to entry’ to some systems is higher than it’s ever been. I was able to cross that barrier for Leica (only to discover it was not for me) and for the Mamya (to realise it really was for me).
By the same token, in 2008 I was able to assemble a large format kit for relatively modest amounts of money. As I got deeper into the format I was able to upgrade from a Shen Hao to a very splendid Ebony 45 camera that accompanied me on trips to places like Death Valley during a two year stint living and working in the US. Today, even cameras from the likes of Shen Hao seem to command prices far higher than I remember from circa 2008.
So, while I apparently offloaded a lot of my film gear at the wrong time, I’m certainly glad that I held onto my Nikon and Minolta 35mm SLR rigs. Above all the F6 and FM3a, both of which I’m using regularly for well over a decade now and which are really just phenomenal fun to shoot. And the Minolta system is kind of like my spiritual home, having started with an X700 and 50mm 1.7 all the way back in 1998. To this day, while I prefer my Nikon bodies, there is no question that I far prefer the look that I get from those beautiful old Minolta lenses.
Anyway, all of this is rather a long winded way of me acknowledging that I have seen the digital light but it does not blind me to the creative potential of film either. It’s all good.
