Film just feels like home.

[rayonline_nz]

I visited a Magnum Photo exhibition some time ago ..

I use digital and film, I took up photography in 2003 with a dSLR but have a fSLR after that and find that a manual focus camera is where I feel most comfortable.

To me at least digital is like manufacturing while film is like at your own pleasure. Having seen some of the photographs, they don't employ split filters or the finest grained film. With film I can go to the lab, chat to the guys and to other customers, get my film, ask for other recommendations, while digital to me is like going to a supermarket where you just pick what you want and head to the checkout counter.

I don't doubt that a lot of technical qualities is with digital and the digital 35mm gear might be approaching medium format, and these days people demand digital like the press and like the customers.

To me film has history, my life was captured on film, it's tangible, digital is pretty good quality maybe like a classy restaurant when the masses like. But film to me is like going away from the city where you may not have that fine dining experience but you get real food, like home made bread/pasta, organic own farmed meats, pizza cooked in a stone oven.

Maybe in time I pick up a Leica M6

 

[Jeff Kubach]

I kinda feel the same way myself.

Jeff

 

[M.A.Longmore]

.
I'll drink some type of organic beverage to that !


Ron
.

 

[benjiboy]

Welcome to APUG Ray, I feel very much the same way as you about film, it's a mature technology that has a rich history and tradition and I personally have never been tempted to buy a digital camera and invest a lot of money in tomorrows obsolescence I have neither the time or patience to learn photography all over again.

 

[hpulley]

It is really great, modern film is so good and while it is a pain that it seems I can't get it processed anywhere in reasonable time, this means I'm forced to use the darkroom again which is actualy a good thing!

With modern lenses you can mount to old 'light tight boxes' in some ways while it is a dark time for film it is also a bright time. Never has the equipment been so affordable anyways.

Really does feel like home compared to cold digital. I just need to be brave enough to shoot it for everything. The one thing digital does have is the immediate feedback, knowing for sure you got the shot. With film, processing it yourself especially it is more satisfying but more worrying at the same time.

 

[2F/2F]

fSLR First time I have heard that used.

To me, there is not much difference between film and digital when it comes to actually shooting and getting what you want with the camera itself. Shooting digital is remarkably close to shooting transparencies, in almost every way. The difference comes when looking at results obtained, processes performed, equipment required and the price tags thereof.

What I really cannot understand is the people who "go" entirely digital, as opposed to simply "using" digital when digital is called for and using film when film is called for. I know I like digital for some things...about five or six times a year, now that I don't use it every day at work. I view it as a choice, just like choosing an emulsion to use. Why so damned many people completely deserted film just because digital came along is beyond me. I guess they just wanted to spend a whole shit-ton of money to make things harder and lower in quality.

 

[M.A.Longmore]

fSLR First time I have heard that used.

.
I think we might have to add fSLR, to the vernacular.

 

[MaximusM3]

Why so damned many people completely deserted film just because digital came along is beyond me. I guess they just wanted to spend a whole shit-ton of money to make things harder and lower in quality.

That is the question I have very often asked myself and I had made that same mistake for a few years. I think it's just that faulty notion of thinking that something new has to be better, maybe? Not sure. I think it's a combination of things but, for the casual shooter, digital made and makes more sense, since quality is not a concern and they rather pop that SD card in and share those pics with the family, upload to Costco or Snapfish for prints etc. It's a different world and, at the core, it's the internet that changed it all.

 

[Allen Friday]

When I get frustrated with my digital camera, I have been known to refer to it as my f-ing DSLR.

 

[msoumya60]

absolutely right

Soumya Mukhopadhyay

 

[Jeff Kubach]

Same here!

Jeff

 

[benjiboy]

I don't have a digital SLR to swear at, but I do think that the biggest leaps forward in the last thirty years in traditional photography hasn't been in the hardware because they've known how to make good cameras and lenses for a long time, but in the films the modern films are wonderful, and streets ahead of what was available twenty years ago.

 

[2F/2F]

I don't have a digital SLR to swear at, but I do think that the biggest leaps forward in the last thirty years in traditional photography hasn't been in the hardware because they've known how to make good cameras and lenses for a long time, but in the films the modern films are wonderful, and streets ahead of what was available twenty years ago.

The irony is staggering, is it not? We are probably at the highest point of film technology and quality ever, yet the market for it is near empty, and dwindling more and more with each digi-gizmo that is introduced.

 

[M.A.Longmore]

.
I was gnikcuF Upset !, that I wasted so many years in "The Digital Daze"
But, now that I am coming to my senses, I realize that it actually helped.
Now I can appreciate buying a camera for $1.00 at a thrift shop, and
buying expired film from APUG members. I would not have considered
such nonsense ten years ago. I even thought that I would be lost
without Kodachrome. Once I got over the depression I realized that
we really have some excellent Film to work with. I am confused by
Kodak, it seems that there isn't much effort to promote film usage
to the general population, and The Digital Denizens.
If I ever see a SoKodak commercial with Trey Songz, or Rihanna
hopefully I will vomit blood all over my TV, That's SoF'dUp ...


Ron
.

 

[j-dogg]

I actually started out shooting digital SLR's and moved up to 35mm film.

I have one DSLR and about 6 35mm's, 4 of them are SLRs.

 

[sbJerseygirl]

"fslr" I do love that. It is a keeper.
"digi-gizmo" gotta love that one, too.

I grew up with film. Although I do use digital, I will never give up my film until for some stupid reason it is altogether gone. No, we cannot even think that way.
Yes, film. I am, and always have been, comfortable with film.
I have a Nikon N75 fslr (see-it fits), but I love my '80's Olympus p&s 35mm. It has never let me down.
Ya see - this is why APUG is here!! Like-minded film-ers. thank you.

 

[PatTrent]

I agree. I like that term--fSLR.

 

[MaximusM3]

.
I was gnikcuF Upset !, that I wasted so many years in "The Digital Daze"
But, now that I am coming to my senses, I realize that it actually helped.
Now I can appreciate buying a camera for $1.00 at a thrift shop, and
buying expired film from APUG members. I would not have considered
such nonsense ten years ago. I even thought that I would be lost
without Kodachrome. Once I got over the depression I realized that
we really have some excellent Film to work with. I am confused by
Kodak, it seems that there isn't much effort to promote film usage
to the general population, and The Digital Denizens.
If I ever see a SoKodak commercial with Trey Songz, or Rihanna
hopefully I will vomit blood all over my TV, That's SoF'dUp ...


Ron
.

Yeah Ron..fire it up!!

I know...I really believe that a little more effort by Kodak especially would bring some of the masses back into film but they don't even try. Sad.
All I know is that with digi-crap I have gotten nothing but a tremendous amount of frustration, dumped money out the window and got nothing to show for it.

Max

 

[M.A.Longmore]

.
fSLR's !
And, FKodak !!!

It's a sad situation, when you speak to someone about photography.

And they ask, " Do They Still Make Film ? "

Something Is Rotten In The "State" Of Rochester ...


Ron
.

 

[hpulley]

"Do they still make film?" "No, I just like the sound this old shutter makes when I press the button... Isn't it nice?"

 

[blockend]

There are two sides. Financially, to buy a DSLR that was built to the same standard as a Canon F1 or a Nikon F2 would cost a fortune and I enjoy using well made objects. Socially, film was removed from public consciousness too quickly and left an authenticity gap where the processing, printing, lab side of photography used to be.
For professionals on a quick turnaround digital makes sense. For amateurs in the true sense of 'lover', film photography is still a marvellous craft skill like etching that's dependent on technique and vision, not technology.

 

[mfratt]

I got my start on digital. I shot and shot and shot, wound up with thousands of JPEGs on my hard drive that I might occasionally go back into and look at or post online to share. I made a few (poor) inkjet prints, and that was it. Photography basically ended after I pressed the shutter and looked at the photo magically appear on the screen.

I've grown bored of that.

Now I'm doing mostly 4x5 and MF. Quality aside, I absolutely love the process. From first metering and composing a shot right through watching my print appear in the developer, its such a hands-on, manual, organic process.

Its not that digital isn't genuine photography - because it is, just with a different medium, but film just seems so much more "real," to me. I know that my photos are physical manifestations of what I captured with my camera, not just a bunch of zeros and ones sitting on a CF card.

It also brings up more challenges for me (I love challenges). The lack of instant gratification, the variables in film and developer, the different ways to go about making a print, etc., have given me a whole new world to explore and try to understand.

I just feel more connected, involved with, and passionate about film photography, and I think that the care I put into it shows in my film work over my digital work.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Welcome to APUG

Steve

 

[2F/2F]

There are two sides. Financially, to buy a DSLR that was built to the same standard as a Canon F1 or a Nikon F2 would cost a fortune and I enjoy using well made objects. Socially, film was removed from public consciousness too quickly and left an authenticity gap where the processing, printing, lab side of photography used to be.
For professionals on a quick turnaround digital makes sense. For amateurs in the true sense of 'lover', film photography is still a marvellous craft skill like etching that's dependent on technique and vision, not technology.

Shoot! All someone needs to do is to make a digital back for those cameras, and I will be first in line. I imagine that the Nikon F would be the easiest to convert, because of the design of its back door/bottom plate. The electronic guts could go underneath the camera in a motor drive-like assembly. All that would be needed would be a working sensor, as the camera already has all the "features" one needs. Being able to throw a D700 sensor onto the back of one of my Fs would get me shooting a good bit more digital.

 

[Bateleur]

Welcome to the forum.

Having attended a photo event on the weekend, being partly commercial but also offering photo opportunities. I realized just how much has changed since I last attended such an event, for it was swamped (as to be expected by the DLSR) and I think I was the only film shooter or at the least one of the very few, treading with a small rangefinder. I did not feel out of the ordinary at all and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Indeed film is my home.