RE: Photographers Still Using Film

[Trevor Cunningham <tr_cunningham@xxxxxxxxx>]

Here's my two cents:

 

I received a 35mm slr for my 16th birthday years back.  I instantly became a shutterbug.  Years passed and I outgrew my initial passion and the camera gathered dust.  When I moved to Egypt in August of 2001, I bought a Sony DSC-75 and renewed that passion for photography.  I acquired a darkroom (and photography students) and dusted off the 35mm to teach myself how to process everything in the darkroom before the class began.  Now, the digital camera began gathering dust.  In the following years, I would purchase my beloved Mamiya 645 and an Arca Swiss 5x7 (recently sold to buy digital gear)...in that time, Kodak stopped producing black and white paper, black and white medium format film VANISHED from Cairo, I even bought all of the Ilford HP5+ available in Amsterdam one afternoon on holiday.  Getting film back home is a snap, though it can be expensive, depending on your budget.  International access is an entirely different story.  I purchased my D200 and now my Mamiya is collecting dust with the last 20 or so rolls of Ilford I have left.  It?s almost like the Sponge episode from Seinfeld.

 

Anyway, the more I use the D200, the more I discover it requires me to know what I?m doing to take a good picture so that I don?t have to dink around with PS.  In my opinion, the challenge here establishes its integrity.  As for film, I am patiently waiting for the market to stabilize and there to be a handful of steadfast monochrome films and papers.  It is my belief that demand is strong enough for such products to exist.  For god?s sake, they still produce typewriters!

 

Cheers...Trevor

Mark Blackwell <mblackwell1958@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Don  Very well said and what works for you is what you should do.  Yet there some things to consider depending on the volume you do.  Even though the equipment is already there, you do have to buy film, paper and chemistry.  Using premium pro grade films the costs can easily add up to make that expensive body seem like a deal.  Listening to one podcast, the person being interviewed spent $50,000 a year on film and processing.  An $8000 body at that point makes sense.  Most don't do nearly that much and you do a lot of that yourself so it should have some consideration for the time involved.  That should also include the consideration for time for digital processing, learning curve and compare that with what you do now.

Now that the technology is maturing, things like scanners and printers are not becoming junk as quickly.  A good flatbed scanner compared with what was available just 5 years ago is far less expensive than a new digital body.  Then the options for manipulations just begin.  You may not want to do them all that way.  I don't like that much time in front of a screen either, but some things are just easier, cheaper and more effective to deal with digitally.  I am not saying that Photoshop should be used to fix bad work.  No more than any amount of makeup can make an ordinary girl a supermodel, using it to improve even great work can make all the difference.

Now back to the print, you have the option of the ink jet, but you also could send it out to a place with a film recorder to make you a new negative from which to print.  The digital world offers a great deal to those that never even think about a digital body.

In the end, no one cares how a print was made, what camera was used or why you did it that way.  Its the viewer response that matters, even if its just you that's the viewer.

Don Feinberg <ducque@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I can't make any "fancy" arguments here.

There are clearly many applications (e.g., photojournalism, shooting action
sports, etc., etc., where digital is clearly the photographic solution of
choice. In other areas, I'm not so sure.

But I don't do sports, photojournalism, street photography, ...

For myself: I have a large investment, made over nearly 50 years, in
"film-based" equipment. I get truly excellent results from this equipment.
(I shoot 66% 4x5 and 33% MF. No 35mm. 66% color, 33% black and white.)

I am in no economic position to even dream to acquire digital capture
equipment which could even come anywhere near the quality of result I
produce routinely today at very low cost (of course, because everything I
own is long since "amortized"). That is to say nothing of thinking about
affording needed "upgrades" a year or two after acquiring the equipment I
can't afford to acquire in the first place.

I produce my own chemistry from bulk, so my chemical costs are very low
indeed. I routinely produce the chemistry I need, even though the
"chemical" may have been long discontinued in the marketplace.

I do have some decent digital printers. They do a pretty good job. Making
a print on those printers costs considerably more than making an equivalent
print in the darkroom.

I have found that I can get some very satisfactory prints by shooting
negative film, then painstakingly scanning it and correcting it in Pshop,
then printing on the inkjet.

--- Sometimes, using Photoshop, I can get control on the print that I would
not be able to get in the darkroom. I then make a "digital" print.

--- I can oftentimes get very much better prints when I print the same
negative in the darkroom.

Quandary!

There are other significant ingredients in my personal equation: I've spent
my career in the computer industry -- I've been working "at a terminal"
since the 1960s. The very last thing I want to do for my recreation is to
sit at a terminal. For me, my darkroom is a really significant "refuge"
from the "outside world". And also, for me, shooting in the field is also
an important refuge from the "outside world". I want to be "with" my
subjects and not with computers. I'm very happy to enjoy "what and where"
I'm doing; if I get some good images, that's a good thing. So it's probably
also a good thing I don't need to support myself with photography.

That's why I intend to be shooting film for the foreseeable future.

Don Feinberg
ducque@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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