How do you feel once you move from film to digital?

Moving from black and white film to digital is like moving from kissing a beautiful seductive woman to kissing your sister. It's still kissing, but it's just not much fun.
 
If I had to make money from photography it would definately be digital just simply to guarantee having got the shot, reduced processing costs and ease of posting on line. Fortunately it is not my day job.
What I have is an unfortunate bi-polar condition with no real stability between film and digital. I can binge buy a load of film and paper spend two or three weeks in the darkroom then Im back on digital again and thinking about packing in film when I look back at my film prints and im thinking digital is junk.
I do not think film and digital sit easilly side by side. Digital is about chimping and fidling and post processing and with film you more or less have to get it right at the point of exposing the picture. This is much harder but ultimately more rewarding. These styles do not easilly mix with me. I either have to do one or the other. In some ways it would be easier if film became extinct or digital sensors could not longer be manufactured.

But the bottom line for me I have taken some of my best shots this year (not my opnion but that of others) and I have to say much of it is digital. The 'professional assigments' I have taken on have been digital and a lot less stressful than film for me. Its just I dont have much respect for the longevity of a digital image either from an inkjet print or stored as a series of numbers. I have never gone to the expense of paying to get a digital image framed. It somehow does not feel worth it. I can run off another any time, its not an original print.

Best wishes

Richard
 
For me it is an issue of productivity, the worst thing a photographer can do is not take photographs, the best thing is to get out and photograph as much as possible, the camera, as a tool, enables us to do this.

Do I rattle through hundreds of digital images to achieve a few likable shots or do I consider my frames very carefully?

I have tens of thousands of digital images on file that I will never look at or "preview" and certainly never print! the experience will never, ever be the same as getting a film back from process and looking at the contact sheets or prints, even if they are only 36 of them, or watching your image fade into existence in the developing trays.

As and artist I used to keep extensive sketchbooks and experiment with image making, I found the sometime accidental aberrations of film exposure and developing fascinating and beautiful! As I moved gradually into the digital domain these sketchbooks lessened as did my creative output and these accidental hues were lost. For me digital photography is counterproductive because it has made photography easy and myself lazy.

As flawless as the digital image can be, I find the whole idea of almost infinite correction from RAW in digital post contradictory and in conflict with the very fundamental element of photography - capturing the moment! It speaks volumes that there are programmes now designed to emulate different film emulsions.
 
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_mark__ said:
As and artist I used to keep extensive sketchbooks and experiment with image making, I found the sometime accidental aberrations of film exposure and developing fascinating and beautiful! As I moved gradually into the digital domain these sketchbooks lessened as did my creative output and these accidental hues were lost. For me digital photography is counterproductive because it has made photography easy and myself lazy.
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I agree with mark on this facet of the Digital Vs. Film saga: I myself have become less creative because of digital photography. I used to keep notebooks as well, and I have altogether stopped drawing, and writing since I picked up a DSLR.

Why? I have no idea. Could be the point in my life, it could be that I have recently graduated from school and have no reason to write or to draw. Either the case, I feel that my DSLR has shown me that I am not as creative as I once thought myself to be.

It is most likely the instant result of digital which instills this feeling -- With film you have to wait for the darkroom, or your lab to process film and return your results. In your head you've still made your fantastic image, but on film you may have destroyed your vision.

With Digital, there is none of this wait -- it's all very instant and all very rapid. This should make a person more creative, shouldn't it?
 
George S. said:
The OP didn't cite any law against both, and most of the responders have also said they use both. Chill.
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George,

I guess I need to respond to your reply to my post. Perhaps I should have put a smiley face after my comment or something. It was not meant to be combative or anything. It actually was meant to be flippant.

It does jar me when I read something like the original post which said "How do you feel once you move from film to digital?" It sounds to me like the OP is implying that it is inevitable that everyone will "move to digital" and abandon film. I guess its the words "once you move". Perhaps I am reading something between the lines that's not there.

I honestly do not understand why people seem to think that there's any "move" involved. I bought my first digital camera in 1999. I'm on my fifth one now. I've never stopped using film. I've never made a "move" to digital. I just started using a digital camera along with film cameras and learned how to shoot digitally. I also bought a film scanner a few years ago and have done some "hybrid photography". I don't see this as a move from one thing or another either.
 
Mcary said:
Then why not just shoot digital the same way you shoot film? Not only will you drastically cut down on the time required for post processing you'll also get better results.
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Be careful there. The concept of "better" is always a subjective one. You cannot make a general statement with that.

I shoot both, digital first, then discovered film. Just to be clear.

I have a lot of examples where film is better in my eyes, for a given subject, for a given light compared to digital. And vice-versa.

More interestingly, a lot of digital photos that I took is made "better" after I applied adjustments that make them look like film. 🙂
 
I shot digital before buying the M8, but that purchase was predicated on me applying the cost of saving film and processing to the exorbitant purchase price, and that entailed me giving up film almost entirely because I'm not a very prolific shooter. The operation of the M8 is so similar to the M6 I had before that I really don't find any change in my style, if I have one that is. And I never found myself shooting more with digital on account of it being "free". For me a camera is just a capture device between the subject and my eye.

Another thing is that all the decent labs within a 10 mile radius of here are gone, so the only film shooting I do now is b&w which I can develop myself. And I was never in love with darkroom work, and since I don't have or want an enlarger, I end up scanning the negatives to digital anyway, which IMO I might as well just shoot it in digital to start with. Unlike some people I don't see anything that great about scanned negatives (and yes I have a 4000dpi film scanner and I know how to use it) to make it worth the added hassle.

I haven't picked up a film camera in at least a year, and not sure if I ever will again. But since I'm confessing, I also haven't picked up my M8 as much as I thought I would. I still like my 20D and since I got a Canon 5D (mark 1 refurb) I haven't touched the M8. Partly that's due to that the M was basically always only my camera for travel due to its size, and in the last couple years we haven't gone anywhere.
 
shadowfox said:
Be careful there. The concept of "better" is always a subjective one. You cannot make a general statement with that.

I shoot both, digital first, then discovered film. Just to be clear.

I have a lot of examples where film is better in my eyes, for a given subject, for a given light compared to digital. And vice-versa.

More interestingly, a lot of digital photos that I took is made "better" after I applied adjustments that make them look like film. 🙂
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Actually yes I can 🙂 As my post had nothing to with digital being better then film or film being better then digital. Rather my point simply was don't use digital as an excuse for being lazy.
 
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I already had a digital workflow for film ( medium format and 35mm slides, BW negs ) when I switched since it was the most cost effective way. Digital has cut down on processing time and cost in such a huge way that the gains outweigh the losses. I think film has an indescribable analog quality that digital still has to produce but to me the M digital cameras are the first ones I have seen that produce a 3 dimensional look to the images ( and this is subjective obviously ) that I find really appealing ( and I am talking about the M8 so M9 should be even better ). People talk about lack of noise from Canon DSLRs etc, but some of the best pics I've seen have grain, mood, and atmosphere. However, if you shoot weddings or events, it is hard to not justify a low noise DSLR solution such as canon for speed and quality of shooting, processing, and delivery time to customer. I guess in the end it depends on what you need to do. I miss the film days in some ways. For example, the fact that each shot counted more since you could not waste film meant that you had to choose your shots carefully. However, on the flip side, I feel more compelled to experiment more with digital since I don't have to worry about processing costs. I could cite more examples, but in the end when you go through those scenarios, you will find that while you will miss somethings about film, digital will outweigh those things with advantages.
 
I had not done any kind of photography since my military days when I decided to go and take photos at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta a number of years ago. I dug out my old Minolta SLR and loaded it with fresh batteries and film and out the door I went. It failed me, with the dreaded (as I came to find out later) Minolta capacitor problem. I was furious!

I went out and bought a couple of film-based cameras on eBay, including a Yashica Electro GN. From there, I bought more film cameras, and then a couple of digital point-and-shoots to take with me on my business trips (I traveled for a living back then).

I never looked back. Now I shoot both. I use them for different reasons, according to their strengths as I perceive them. I don't pick one as 'superior' over the other and I don't play stupid-ass games about which is better or which makes me a better photographer or any of that nonsense.

When we take a great photograph, we want to take credit for it - we did it, not the camera. And yet somehow when we take a crappy photo, some of us want to blame the technology. It's the digital that made me do it badly, they say. It's the digital that made me sloppy. It's the digital that ruined my work habits. It's the digital that ruined my eye for good composition. I had no control over it, digital did it to me. It reminds me of people who want to believe that when they do good, it's because of them, but when they do bad, the 'devil' made them do it.

How do I feel about moving from film to digital? Well, I never did. I use both. I don't see why I have to take a 'side' or why if I chose one over the other, it should make the other 'bad' now. There's something wrong with people who feel that need.
 
Waffle warning!

I see the results from digital cameras and pp, as they technology gets better, moving further and further away from the film aesthetic, there is a new hyper-realist sense to the scenes they capture!

With each new M9/Canon/Nikon shot I see I am reminded of the atmosphere portrayed in the work of Philip-Lorca Dicorcia, where the light and saturation of life are not enough so they are augmented with theatrical and cinematic lighting techniques - figures and objects aren't rooted in the reality of their environment but are set appart by this clever fakery! This sense of alienation of object/figure can be seen in the results from the new sensors - subjects float in a strange, new digital miasma and its hyper-reality is most noticeable in the skies, geometric patterns, the rendering of darker evening shadows, motion highlights, very busy landscapes etc. To me the faults are all there, I see them and I cannot deny them, the more I analyse the more I see.

These faults are then compensated for, hidden or emphasized in post using filters/algorithms that emulate techniques hard won in the darkrooms, knowledge of mistakes, what works, what doesn't and why, acquired over years, not hours watching tutorials! At the last these filters cannot get it quite right, they only nearly do and this close proximity of digital images to their chemically processed equivalent only adds to the overall sense of unease, that what we are looking at is the familiar but something is a little off.

So I add a couple of inconvenient and sometimes costly stages to my workflow, there is dust, smells, chemicals, human error - so what! For me to not do these things would be lazy and I would sacrifice to much to convenience, I'm going now to buy my dinner at Macdonald's, I don't have time to cook and it tastes the same anyway.
 
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I've only recently felt good about digital after getting a M8. Nothing else satisfied me... the M8 feels enough like a classic M to satisfy me. I prefer the LCD to see if I got the image I wanted and printing at home is safe and relatively economical. I'm ok with the switch.
 
How do I feel? Dunno, never moved. How do I feel about using digital (M8, M8.2, M9) for colour, alongside an MP? Initially, a slight discomfort (in the teeth of 40 years with film) and an odd but indefinable sense of guilt. Both have pretty much passed. The M9 really felt like getting my film Leicas back.

Until M-series digital came out, digital was a indispensable professional tool, and very convenient, but not much fun. Then again, in the last 20+ years, I haven't used film SLRs much either.

Cheers,

R.
 
I love them both. But in the final analysis, I see little difference between film and digital. Both offer an excellent way to capture images, which is what the game is all about.
For me, at least for now, it looks like digital is going to rule the day. It's just so much easier, from a workflow standpoint. I am shooting so much more more than I did when I only shot film. It's just a very liberating experience.
 
If I moved from film totally to digital I'd feel that I'd abandoned photography and sold my soul to the devil!
 
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