I love film, I will always use it and when it runs out I will use glass negatives in big old cameras with a lens cap and no shutter. That does not mean I cannot have it both ways. Just this year I bought my wife a digital point and shoot. Now Im looking for a fixed lense 28mm digital point and shoot to mess around with.
This subject can get as contriversial and personal as one wants to take it but I no longer see a divide. Film is film and digital is digital, basicly you capture a image then process it and then present it. Afterall there are only two ways I can think of to present a image in the end, either on some form of paper as a print or on a moniter or digital screen. Knowing this and getting my head around it has given some freedom. I dont care for the whole photoshopped up fantasy image thing but if you make a real image a little bit more real I have no issue with that. It was a wakeup call this summer when news staff got caught photoshopping up war pictures out of Lebanon. That single issue crosses a line bigtime with me, kinda like Forest Gump pictures with Nixon being presented as historical fact. Photography is real for me, I dont want to lose that.
As is my style, my song and dance routine, Im going in the oppisite direction away from most of the photographic consumer market. As of now Im opening a Darkroom for some commercial work as it seems every darkroom around me has shut down. Now nobody even sells black and white film anymore here so I figure what the helll, Ill just open up a shop with no competition and a real good coffee maker. In reality I plan to use film and scan to digital in all formats and Im getting set up with large format in film with a old fashoined portrait studio to use at my pleasure. In the next couple years I will go big digital with a scanning back for 4x5 too. I was very impressed with betterlights scanning backs for digital large format. Then when I saw the Sinar modular system I saw the light you could say or at least I saw my future in photography.
I recently took a long and hard look at the D$LR scene and I will be passing on that for sometime and will refocus an film SLR cameras. I just saw that Tony sold a F5 for five or six hundred bucks and I would much rather have that than any consumer model D$LR. Just look at how Leica is screwing the people who bought that high dollar R9 digital back, now its totaly canceled. For that matter the Leica R series analog cameras are becoming very affordable. Just last year I passed on buying a Safari set with 3 or 4 lenses for half of what the body would have sold for new and it was imaculate in condition. Currently there are enough rangfinder and SLR cameras and lenses to last everbody on this forum 5 lifetimes and fewer people are catching the fever we have for mechanical cameras. This says that even more will become availavble. Museums can only handle so many Leica and other camera collections and at some point they will also be back on the street (The ones horded up by the collectors who are dieing off).
Software is whats going change most die hard film guys minds about digital anyway. Were currently just on the tip of the ice burg as far as it goes. This current overrated digital plastic passing as image capturing fine instruments have a shelf life of maybe six months. Im happy to say my first Bessa R2 is still kicking after getting dragged down every dirt road from Sihanoukville Cambodia all the way up the Mekong River to Luang Prabang Laos with a few side trips to Malaysia. A D$LR would have lasted maybe a week in the conditions I live in here which is at times 95% humidity and 35 plus centigrade. I learned my lesson at the camera shop when a fancy high dollar digital camera got sent back 3 times in a row, Im just glad it was not mine.
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