"Glad to see someone is still shooting film"

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retro

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I was at a yard sale this morning. I didn't see
anything that interested me and I asked the gentleman,
an apparently well-off middle aged guy, if he happened
to have any cameras he wanted to sell.

"What kind of cameras?" he asked.

"Oh, I like all kinds but I especially like the older
film cameras," I said.

This seemed to put him into something of a confusion
and he said hesitantly, "Glad to see someone is still
shooting film."

Then he mulled over my question with a confused expression
on his face and after a while he disappeared into the house.
He came out with two cameras: a P&S and a near-mint
Pentax MX with 50/1.4 which I ended up buying for very
little money.

Later, after I left, his comment kept coming back to me:
"Glad to see someone is still shooting film." It was the
way he said it-- like "Glad to know people are still
riding horses" or " ... still using candles to read by."
Like it was some ancient, arcane technology.

I figure the guy must be something of a serious photog
if he had an MX. So, was he surprised to learn that
people still shoot film? It sure seemed like it. His
apparent confusion and dazed expression when I asked him
about film cameras seem to indicate that the thought
never occurred to him that someone might still want to
shoot film and the low price he placed on the MX seemed
to indicate that as well. The funny thing was the batteries
in the MX were still good so it couldn't have been sitting
idle for too long.

This is not by any means the only time I've gotten a
reaction like this from people I ask about selling their
cameras (I'm a yard sale junkie). Are we dinosaurs or
has the world gone into a state of sudden photographic
amnesia? It seems like the "digital revolution" has only
been with us for about a decade yet so many people these
days, even middle-aged ones who were once serious film
shooters, suddenly seem completely clueless about film
photography!
 
retro said:
Like it was some ancient, arcane technology.
Click to expand...

Well it is a relatively ancient, arcane technology although that doesn't mean it's no good. I mean if you were inventing a picture-taking device from scratch in a world where most of your potential customers have access to a computer you would produce a digital camera, right? It wouldn't even occur to you to produce something as complicated, slow and resource hungry as a film camera.

Personally I like film but that's probably because I've been using it a long time and still don't feel that I've fully explored the possibilities and partly because I enjoy the fact that, like me, it's ancient and arcane. I'm reminded a bit of Atget who continued to use glass plates well into the film era -- they worked for him so why change? Perhaps it was this aspect that the guy found reassuring.
 
I have experienced all sorts of reactions from people regarding film, seems that many are actually surprised that there is choice ~ still. Consumers are swamped with digital marketing presenting the illusion of choice when in fact the choice is really the same product with the same look and features, only the brand name is different and yet the consumer has no idea that their `choice' of 4 `different' products is produced in the same place. Film and digital are two very different choices.
Yet after all this time we STILL use the internal combustion engine and anyone with a different approach is regarded as a bit accentric?
regards
CW
 
Film is still there - I have at least 2000 rolls in my freezer and use anywhere from 450 -600 rolls/year ( and keep topping it up to keep the level). Digital has its place - and I have to admit that if I had to shoot for a living again - I would be completely "pixillated".
My problem with digital is that it is still at Atget's glass plate level in technology. No "standards" that is transferable between systems, long term viability is still up in the air ( and I am not talking 5-10 years here. I am talking documentary photography that will tell people 50-100 years from now why things became what they see etc).
Film is a mature media and we have pictures/negatives from 150-170 years ago that can be reproduced without major problems. We tend to operate at a visual level and our perception of the last 150 years is to a great extent based on images. What will the generation coming into maturity in 2070 -2100 have a as a reference, dead DVD's, crashed hard-drives and obsolete processing systems. Ok. many, if not most of the images shot today are not worth the time or effort to "reformat" ( and how many of us would do that - and in particular, how many of our offspring are going to do it with dad's or grand dads' old hard-drives, DVD etc).
The biggest problem is to decide what is worthwhile storing. What is important to us today, might hold little interest for future generations. What we consider mundane and boring today, could be "anthropologically" important 100 years from now.
Some time in the future, we will have digital storage media with 100+ years life-span (based on real-life terms - not manufacturers claims) - but in the meantime we are loosing decades of documentary and historical data.
Yes, large institutions will store, reformat etc - but this is a group whose bias is suspect and I would hate to have future generations basing their historical data on selected files from a government sponsored source!!!
Hence. I am sticking to film - and black/white at that!
 
In this regard I want to tell the story of how my dad converted to digital...

He is more of a film guy, I mean super-8 films. He used to film whenever we went on family vacations, and later would take weeks to sort out the super-8 material, cut it by hand, synchronize sound and spoken documentation, and make a sort of documentary movie out of it. Now, more than 30 years later you have no idea how incredible it is to watch these movies. He used to show them with a projector, and an ever growing screen... and then, in the mid nineties, he discovered digital cameras.

His first one, a JVC, not sure which model, was extremely small compared to his analog equipment. He could review right away, sound recording was built in, and he ended up with a digital editing board (not Windows/Mac based). Even though I wasn't much into picture taking and even less into filming in those days, the "downgrade" in quality was very apparent to me. Later he upgraded to better equipment, and sometimes sent me still shots he took with those cameras... it was acceptable at best.

Today he has quite a capable digital film camera, and the quality of his films is quite good again. But to me there is just something missing, it's the depth, the richness of the old super-8 films. The humming of the projector, the sometimes slurring sound of the tape-recordings.

I never really discussed this with him (I think I will though), but I am pretty sure there was one simple reason why he went digital: convenience. This may be much more obvious when talking about filming, yet I think that most people that converted from analog picture taking to digital have done it for the same reason (I did, although I am currently converting back to analog again).

The convenience of seeing the image right away, and retaking the shot if necessary. The convenience of just loading the images into the computer and looking at them right away, even if only one picture was taken. The convenience of quickly sending an image to friends and family as an email attachment. These are all perfectly reasonable points.

But what most people don't seem to realize, and what amazes me again and again, is that most digital cameras today, especially the low and middle class compact cameras, just don't deliver quality pictures. JPG artifacts, oversaturated images, blown out highlights... all just very common for the occasional digital photographer.

Digital cameras have come a long way, but even today it takes enthusiasm and a bit of knowledge to take good pictures with digital cameras (and a good camera which can be expensive). To me this enthusiasm has translated into rather taking the long and less convenient way of analog photography than trying to keep up with digital technology and trying my best with the next x million megapixel camera. Since going back to analog, I rather take my time to compose, take the time to get perfect scans, and enjoy the end result just as I did enjoy dad's old movies.
 
I once ran out of black and white film when on vacation, so I went into a store that had a sign saying they sold Kodak film. I asked which black and white films they carried and they told me to go ask at the local antique store down the road...
 
I once led an archeological dig in Ethiopia and amongst the remnants of early man and arrowhead tools found beneath an ancient swampland there were a couple of rolls of kodachrome..














:angel:
 
If you read photo magazines, nobody shoots film. And you'd be led to believe that your basic $100 p&s takes better pictures than that arcane antique film stuff. Hell I've read on this very board that "colleges n longer use film for photography classes." Which is a load of crap.

In other words, pretty much everybody who sees it likes film shots, but popular culture holds that nobody uses the stuff. So it's not surprising that someone out of the loop believes that nobody uses film any more.
 
retro said:
"Glad to see someone is still
shooting film."
Click to expand...

I usually get something more like " You're still shooting film!?" Followed up by " You know they're going to stop making film pretty don't you". I even get this from people that were once keen photographers. Other film photographers I see around are usually under 30, so that gives me some hope. On the other hand, my grand daughter keeps looking in the back of my camera to see where the picture is. Once I stop chuckling, I get really depressed.
 
The only place you see film cameras is on the internet. In the real world you hardly see them. A lot of digital cameras can be seen, so I guess your experience just shows you how the real world is.
 
The interesting thing is that film is coming back. Not so much among the pro-shooters - but us mere mortals - who take pictures for fun or devotion to old processes.
The lab's that survived the "digital" revolution - are busy again.
The reason is the fact that you cant tack a digital image up on a note board or a fridge (well, if you had it printed - but few do).
A lot of wedding shooters are going back to film. Simply a matter of economy. If you shoot multi 1000's of shots ("just in case") - you then have to spend hours, if not days, editing on screen. Shoot film - drop it at the lab, hand the client proofs - have the lab do the final choices and deliver. Maybe 1/2 days work. The digital guy is still stuffing huge files through Photo Shop. The film shooter is already out lining up the next assignment!!! Ok. this is simplified - but from what I hear among shooting friends, it is more and more prevalent!
Some stuff digital does better. Shooting performances - yes a Nikon D3s - which can operate and produce decent stuff @ 12000 asa is a godsend.
Only other benefit i can see - the more pictures people take - the more they learn, one hopes, about photography and some of them will start wondering about this chemical form of image making and take up film.
Ok, at least I hope they will.
 
pakeha said:
I have experienced all sorts of reactions from people regarding film, seems that many are actually surprised that there is choice ~ still. Consumers are swamped with digital marketing presenting the illusion of choice when in fact the choice is really the same product with the same look and features, only the brand name is different and yet the consumer has no idea that their `choice' of 4 `different' products is produced in the same place. Film and digital are two very different choices.
Yet after all this time we STILL use the internal combustion engine and anyone with a different approach is regarded as a bit accentric?
regards
CW
Click to expand...


Not for too much longer I wouldn't think! Carbon based energy hasn't done the Gulf of Mexico too many favours and the on going effects of that disaster will be around for many years!

About film ... I do constantly get people expressing surprise when I tell them film is still readily available!

"Reports of it's death have been greatly exagerated!"
 
I get comments from people on cameras time to time and that's cool because that allows me to engage with them for my own egoistic photographic needs. But a couple of instances made me feel no particular sympathy towards them. Sometimes some old dude brandishing his P&S or a small DSLR notices my rangefinder or a TLR or some other "niche" device and will make their way over to start telling me how they have/had the same exact device and how "real" how amazing it was with most amazing results all the while looking down and frowning upon their P&S/DSLR de jour. I don't get it and I don't attempt to. You have it at home or you got rid off it in favor of what you're holding but still bemoaning it... uhhh "Great, great, have a nice day, I'll see you later". I get bored as soon as the conversation starts.

Only once I felt bad. Somewhere in the mountains of Catalonia, tiny village, I was hiding from the rain in a small bar when a man approached me trembling at a sight of my Rolleiflex. Asked me to hold it and looked like he wanted to cry. Asked me how the hell do I get film?! Tiny village, deep in the mountains, I imagined film was really finished for this guy. I advised internet, but of course he didn't use it. So I reached in my pocket and gave him some 120 film. He didn't take it though, his TLR was having issues and he didn't bother to fix it since film disappeared there. (I got all this with my vocabulary of 20-30 Spanish words 🙂 ).
 
Tom A said:
A lot of wedding shooters are going back to film.
Click to expand...

I have a friend who shoots the occasional wedding. He says he actually gets requests to do part of the wedding in film. I suspect it may be the novelty factor, they like to see him work with his funky "old fashioned" cameras, and maybe some bragging rights with their friends. Whatever the reason -- its a great thing.

Whats amazing about the transition to digital (and a little bit back again) is how quickly it happened. It was only ten years ago that the engineering firm I used to work for (who needed to take very high quality photos) was debating whether or not to move entirely over to digital.
 
Keith said:
Not for too much longer I wouldn't think! Carbon based energy hasn't done the Gulf of Mexico too many favours and the on going effects of that disaster will be around for many years!

About film ... I do constantly get people expressing surprise when I tell them film is still readily available!

I think the gulf spill has been a news item for more than a week simply because of where the spill occurred. Take a look at Niger delta, it has been going on there for years, no one gives a damm. This is not to say that the gulf issue is diminished, but it sure won`t change habits or `rights'. It will continue and we will be forced to pay more.

About film, yep if they lifted their heads about 10 degrees from the kiosk screen they would in many cases see it shelved behind the counter, i am so often asked ` where do you get your film'? my answer, ` same place you print your snaps"🙂
rergards
CW
Click to expand...
 
Fawley said:
Whats amazing about the transition to digital (and a little bit back again) is how quickly it happened. It was only ten years ago that the engineering firm I used to work for (who needed to take very high quality photos) was debating whether or not to move entirely over to digital.
Click to expand...

I think that is the pudding. It shows how much better digital is suited in todays world. For film we can only hope there is a big enough market to keep the producers in business.......
 
fdigital said:
I once led an archeological dig in Ethiopia and amongst the remnants of early man and arrowhead tools found beneath an ancient swampland there were a couple of rolls of kodachrome..
:angel:
Click to expand...


Was that Kodachrome-X or Kodachrome II???
 
I recently shot an assignment at the state capitol and had a cute young intern ask me if my M8 was a film camera. I said no, this is the digital version. She said "Oh, it would be cool if it was film."
 
pachuco said:
I recently shot an assignment at the state capitol and had a cute young intern ask me if my M8 was a film camera. I said no, this is the digital version. She said "Oh, it would be cool if it was film."
Click to expand...

I have had people asking me if my Bessa III is digital! As if I would walk around with a camera with a 60x70 mm sized sensor! They do get a bit miffed when they cant see the picture instantly though!
 
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