Why ℗ Analogue Film in a digital Age?

aRolleiBrujo

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E. von Hoegh

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I actually love the digital revolution, I can get high quality film gear for peanuts. A beautiful Nikon F2A with new foam, signs of recent service, accurate meter and shutter, spotlessly clean inside and out for $100 shipped - seller netted $84.50. A gift Rollei Automat with spotless glass, good mirror, needs a CLA. Just two examples.
 

Joe VanCleave

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I shoot digital also. But doing so has freed me to also shoot film, and paper negatives. In fact, shooting paper becomes my antidote to digital, keeping my hands in the game. The two media - film/paper and digital - are more different than similar, seen in this way. Their results might be nearly the same, as viewed by someone on the Internet, but the two processes are entirely different in practice. And I like that.

~Joe
 

JBrunner

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As bit rates increase the result will become...wait for it...indistinguishable to a curve, until it becomes a simple mathematical model of a curve, sort of like a vector file. Digital is more or less a fad to save bandwidth and space. When those bottlenecks fall away, people will be discovering the hot new thing, analog.
 

Arklatexian

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For me it is not about giga or petapixels and what not. Photography is my hobby, digital imaging is not. Simple as that. I tried, I know. And the tradition of more than a century of photography is so inspiring. Well, my version of the answer.


My reason for shooting film rather than digital is basically the same as above. I shoot digital of subjects that I am more or less forced to shoot (birthdays, etc). I shoot film of subjects that "I" am interested in. If someone else likes them, great. If not, I don't really care. As it says above: Film photography is my hobby. "MY HOBBY"......Regards!
 

DREW WILEY

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Besides being a tactile craft, I prefer the more nuanced look of what film and darkroom paper provide. I can certainly admire those digital
practitioners who get good enough at it to mimic the real thing - well, almost mimic. But why bother? Chemical photography is itself a technical revolution, and one with a century and a half head start on digital, so hardly backwards when taken in that perspective. It still looks
like the winning horse to me. That's what I care about, the end result, not bragging rights to the newest electronics store gadget.
 
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As it says above: Film photography is my hobby. "MY HOBBY"......Regards!

I'm sorry, but that's mistaken...

The ongoing digitalization of our various cultures demands that you cease practicing such an inefficient form of photography as your hobby. The digital ethos further demands that your hobbies be practiced with the utmost in speed and with the highest possible MTBF metric. It's all about quantity produced per unit time as a measure of return on investment in leisure.

You need to start thinking less about dawdling along with film and start thinking more about going hypersonic with digital, mister. Because if you don't change your ways real quick now you risk being "left behind" in the revolution. And nobody wants to end up trailing the herd. We all know what the lurking wolf packs think of that.

Besides, the faster you can get your practice of those time-consuming hobbies successfully completed and out of the way, the quicker you can return to your real job and resume doing something productive for those 12 hours each day, which is where we all really belong in the first place.

I'm reminded of a long ago interview with no less a digital evangelical than Bill Gates himself. When asked what he thought of the (at the time) hit TV show Friends, his simple response, delivered with a coldly dismissive sneer, was...

"Don't those people ever work?"



Ken
 

Prest_400

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Ken

So there was a time I shot everything in digital, a year and a half ago. I realised that I really didn't need the speed of having the shots NOW. Infact for connectivity and snapshots, the phones do better.

Then at the very end of last year, the kit lens of my mirrorless broke. Any alternative and replacement lens is around 200$ at least. I thought, "Those $ will go towards film."
There was the OM-1 and a roll of Tri-X that has been around the world with me and never got anything to do with. Put the latter into the former, and I daily carry the Oly now.
 

lxdude

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The ongoing digitalization of our various cultures demands that you cease practicing such an inefficient form of photography as your hobby.
Yes! Speed up your workflow, dammit!
 

E. von Hoegh

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So we can be good little consumers, busily converting goods into trash and sending the trash to China in shipping containers, where it is "recycled" under terribly toxic conditions into more goods to be turned into...
 

tony1

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love live film

there is lots of love in film not in digital
 

ME Super

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Why analog? Here's one very good reason: projection. A cheap slide projector does a better job of projecting photos than the latest whiz-bang digital projector.
 

peter k.

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Ah Ken you have put it so well... two thumbs up, ... for those who do not understand what I perceive as your irony let me try ..
 
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peter k.

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Hahaha... Was eating breakfast, and got the rest of the story...
Are you in Colorado?
No haven't smoked weed (or drank liquor) in over 30 years... but like coffee, but never drank it in Maui.
 
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Bill Burk

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I guess I can say I never drank coffee in Maui either.

But when my photography teacher said that coffee gives you the shakes... rather than give up coffee... There ever after I swore to use a tripod.

There is nothing like the realization after you get home that you should have used a tripod... when you had been 30 miles away from trailhead, in a beautiful awe-inspiring scenery... WITH a tripod, but didn't use it.
 
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"These old cameras can disarm people and can be the starting point for some great portraits. There's something more friendly about film cameras, even quaint, and I try and make that work for me."

This is exactly why I keep my 4x5 Crown Graphic in as-new condition, both cosmetically and functionally. There is no worse ambassador for film than some broken down rusty piece of junk being held together with duct tape and chicken wire.

I want people to be amazed by what they see in my hands. Not repulsed by it. Then be excited enough by it to ask me to make their picture with such a beautiful antique instrument.

And when I'm done, also just maybe to think a little bit about their own film camera possibilities...



Ken
 
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