You are fortunate to have some level of enjoyment out of your job. I sit at a computer all day with spreadhsheets and reports, emails...ugh. Working on Photoshop is the last thing I want to be doing.
I shot the same way, as before.
.
Somebody has to do it, that is, go out and replace their camera every six month with the latest and greatest techie gadget. It's our duty. After all, if we don't support the consumer electronics industry, all those poor electronics engineers around here will get laid off and never be able to afford a real darkroom of their own!
You are fortunate to have some level of enjoyment out of your job. I sit at a computer all day with spreadhsheets and reports, emails...ugh. Working on Photoshop is the last thing I want to be doing.
I have done color correcting in a lab for years and have been able to see many times over that digital not only blows-out much easier than film, but looks worse when it does. Unlike film, even moderate overexposure is noticeable, especially in skin tones. Contrast and tonality is also different and un-natural looking to me.
... which is exactly why so many techie engineers on our trails around here stop by to chat and drool whenever I have one of my view cameras propped up on a lovely wooden tripod. "Real camera. Gosh, what a beauty, real film? Wish I had one of those. ...
Shooting film doesn't make your photos better than the digital "hacks". It doesn't make you superior in any other way, either.
Exactly. Drawing lines can sometimes be a fairly arbitrary exercise. NB23 says analog is great and digital sucks. Oh wait, make that analog is great and digital sucks, unless you print on RC, in which case analog is as bad as digital.
And what of hybrid processes? Suppose someone makes an enlarged digital negative to print onto platinum? Does it suck? Does it depend on whether or not the original camera was film or digital?
Brian, (just to be a pain), suppose you were a few inches further away from the print and couldn't see the grain, are you saying you could tell a well made silver print from a well made digital print based on its tonality? To take this challenge a logical step further (since relatively few film shooters make silver prints), are you sure you could tell the difference between a silver print made from either a film negative or a digital negative (or tell the difference between a digital print made from either a film negative or a digital "capture")? Be honest now.
I'm not sure about the "hard work" part either. I just don't think we can assume that.
Regarding your last statement, I feel the same way. If digital was the only option, I probably wouldn't do it because it wouldn't be enjoyable for me - regardless of whether or not I could get the same results. But that last part is important. I would have to first admit that strictly speaking my preference for analog is less about art, quality etc., and more about the medium.
That was true in the old days of 8-bits per color, but modern cameras use 16-bits per color and it makes a big difference.
You keep saying things like "since relatively few film shooters make silver prints" and I just don't think that's true. At least it's not so true for those who are above the snapshooting with consumer C41 level. I don't know what the percentage is of black and white film that is printed optically versus scanned and printed digitally, but I'd wager the optically printer percentage is pretty high.
I agree with Michael.
I'd expect the proportion of APUG members who print to be pretty high, but amongst the general population of film users really rather low.
The film groups on Flickr especially are really very active (the membership of some of them being significantly higher than APUG) and jammed with black and white film photographs, but looking through the discussion forums there, I'm inclined to think that very few are being printed, and fewer still wet printed.
But I've no idea what counts as "above the snapshooter ... level" ... somebody who prints maybe? in which case the argument is circular.
Anyway, FvD threads are ultimately pointless and worthless so far as I can see.
The world doesn't change one iota as a result of them, the entrenched "0s and1s are bad" set become ever more entrenched and the more open minded get more annoyed and frustrated. No wonder the APUG T&Cs explicitly say "no digital vs. traditional threads in general forums"
At lunch today, I took off looking for something to photograph. I'm running some film through three cheap, simple cameras just to see what they will show me. I stopped at a little corner memorial in Stanton, CA honoring Stanton's service men and POW's.
As I was leaving, I saw a gorgeous 59 Chevy Bel-air so I started taking pictures. A couple of minutes into my shoot, the car starts to lower itself to the ground.
The car's owner had come out of his house and was playing with his hydraulics while I was taking a pic. As we talked for a while, he asked why I still shot film when digital is faster, cheaper, and better (I wasn't going to debate the point with him).
After thinking for a moment, I replied, "That's like asking a painter why he doesn't just take a picture."
I got a "Hmmmm" and a nod.
I thanked him for his time and gave him my card, saying "drop me an email if you would like copies".
It was fun
I encounter film shooters who scan and print digitally fairly often. It's certainly a viable alternative for those who would like to work with film, but don't have resources to have a full-fledged darkroom with an enlarger. I know a couple of photographers who routinely do scan/print with large format and have access a large, very well equipped darkroom.
The costs are not necessarily lower, but for those who don't enjoy darkroom work, or are unable to, it's a method of working that can work very well.
Further, I expect that if it hasn't happened yet, it will soon, that enlargers that aren't already in the hands of darkroom practitioners will be scarce or very expensive to obtain, making digital methods the only alternative for many.
Believe it or not I seriously considered going hybrid for one particular application: I enjoy using my 4x5 view camera and figure 8x10 would be the same only more so. A 4x5 ground glass view is something special. An 8x10 is sublime. But there's the difficulty of optically enlarging 8x10. While the enlargers are often free they are so large you need to a) find them locally, b) have a truck and couple of strong guys to help you move them, and c) need a high ceiling and space for something nearly the size of a compact car. The exceptions are the Besler and Zone VI tabletop models but both those command fairly premium prices and I'm not sure of the availability of things like replacement tubes for the Zone VI CL head. Bottom line was if I got an 8x10 I'd either have to settle for contact prints. Granted, they can be beautiful, but cropping is limited to sizes smaller than 8x10 of necessity and it seemed weird to get a camera and film costs four times as big just to make prints limited to 1/4 the size of what I could easily make from my 4x5 negatives, and for that matter the difference in quality between a 4x5 enlarged to 16x20 and an 8x10 is unlikely to be detectable anyway.) Then I thought - I'll just scan 'em. Plus that makes dealing with dust SO much easier. But the more I thought about this the more I realized I'd be giving up the part of photography I enjoyed the most, to make prints no better (or not much) than I could already make, by using a camera much larger and heavier and more expensive to run in terms of film cost. Then I thought "WTH was I thinking?" and decided 4x5 will do just fine for now.
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