Are we addicted to film cameras and not film?

[Godfrey]

When I pick up my Leica M4-2, the only things that are different from when I pick up my M-D are that it doesn't have a meter in it, I have to wind on to the next frame by hand, and I only have up to 36 frames to expose and all at the same ISO setting. Otherwise, I can hardly tell the difference.

I'm addicted to photography. I use film and digital cameras. They're all the same, and they're all different. Life is more complicated than being addicted to equipment.

G

 

[Phil_F_NM]

I'll say that I may be "addicted" to film cameras but also I would shoot nothing but film if I had both the time and space to develop my own. My Ricoh GRD IV makes incredible images but it is far nicer to shoot my F2 with a 28mm lens. I love working with my Bell & Howell Filmo 70s (70A, 70DL, 70DR) and I would shoot thousands of feet of 16mm film only if I could afford it.
I recently shot about 1.6 hours of footage on the aforementioned Ricoh GRD. That is almost $1000 worth of 16mm film to feed my Filmos. Digital is just more convenient that way and since the GRD was purchased used it has paid for itself several times over due to the convenience alone.
As a hobby camera repairman, I also have no problem working on largely mechanical cameras. Even the electromechanical bodies of the 80s and 90s can be fixed since some of the components are modular. So when I am craving some time where I am working with my hands and don't want to go out to work on my car, I grab one of my collection of cameras to either fix or rob a component from for a future repair.
Phil Forrest

 

[Ted Striker]

I shoot film and digital, and it doesn't take any more skill to get film right than it does to get digital right.

😀😀😀😀

Hilarious!

 

[ptpdprinter]

😀😀😀😀 Hilarious!

Film proponents want to make doing film correctly some kind of alchemy that only the illuminati can master. It is not. It is a very straight forward process. But I understand the need to make it as complicated as possible. It erects barriers to entry so you can remain an exclusive little club. The real trick, however, is making a worthwhile image regardless of the medium. You see many technically perfect film and digital images that are not worth taking the time to look at. Finding an exceptional image is more difficult.

 

[DougK]

I've done quite a bit of both film and digital. I like both and while at one time I might have been inclined to take sides on the matter, I've come around over the years to focus on the image. While it can be interesting and instructive to know how an image was made, I really don't care as long as it's good/interesting (not always the same).

I'm happy that I live in a time when I can take fantastic snapshots with my iPhone XR and turn around and do a B&W portrait with a manual focus SLR on Tri-X 400 developed in an Agfa Rondinax, should I choose to do so.

 

[rjstep3]

For me it is the whole process, the careful composition, the waiting for the processing, the expectation building, the boring scanning, then the fun playing with the digital images in the digital darkroom.

Crazy - if I wanted digital images, why not just shoot digital?

I tried that for a while and my photography just went trivial. Like on holiday late last year watching a foursome of young people at a table in a restaurant each with their enormous DSLR's with massive glass on the front. They sat there and photographed their plates of food as they were served, and then looked at the back of the camera as if the picture would look somehow different from the food they had just photographed!

I found the same with digital, looking back at the images I took in those years, they were just rubbish, odd shots of my wife, mundane subjects I hadn't bothered to compose. Film just makes me focus on what I am doing and makes me try to get a better shot as film costs money and effort.

I sometimes wonder - TBH, my Opticfilm 120 is playing up at the moment, I have learned much more about Photoshop and scanning by scanning in all my old film, so am contemplating going through all my old film and scanning it in again and doing better with it this time around. Crazy, what!

Film keeps me off the streets and away from doing anything worse, my wife is happy with that, it's a quiet life.

 

[stephaneb]

For me it is mainly the cameras. Film rendition is a lure too but I am not yet sure this will last. It might, though.

I had gone full digital since the end of 2013. The Nikon D800 did that to my Mamiya RZ67. Which I kept. A year later I switched to Fuji and now have an X-T1, X-T2 and X-H1 and a few lenses. I like the X-H1 very much.

6 weeks ago I found oldish (2 years expired) rolls of PanF 50 in a cupboard. I could not even consider throwing them away, so I got the RZ out of its bag. And used it again. The view fer! The manual focus! Those lenses! The tactile feedback. The weight, much less enjoyable. But I did miss the camera. I didn't miss film per se. Of course I have now rediscovered what it's like to expose for the shadows not having to worry about blown highlights, the still unsolved problem with digital.

I re-acquired a Paterson tank and the other needed stuff and chemicals. I took the opportunity to order Perceptol to try it. The process of developing film is fine if it does not become a job, meaning it is going to be fine if it remains low volume.

It got me thinking. To have a digital sensor is not a problem per se, except for those highlights. The problem is the cameras with which doing manual focus is ridiculously difficult, slow and not enjoyable at all, doing manual exposure is OK but not ergonomically well thought out.

The fact is, there is no need to measure the light for each single picture. If shooting candids, if you need to focus when you want to take the shot it means you didn't do your job of pre-focusing with the right depth of field. But doing this with autofocus lenses and EVF or OVF of AF cameras is not as easy, far from it, as it is with traditional MF cameras.

Leica might be onto something with their M digital after all.

So I am now considering getting an FM2 to see how that goes and if it proves to be enjoyable I'll take the opportunity to try the legendary 105/2.5 and 20/3.5 🙂

My wonderful RZ67 and the Nikon are appealing cameras. They happen to use film, which has drawbacks as well as benefits. The sensor type is not that important. The experience is paramount for us who do not shoot to make a living.

 

[Godfrey]

I do photography. I use film, I use digital, I use various different formats, I use manual or automatic exposure, I use manual or automatic focus. Et cetera. I use super high quality lenses, I use pinholes and zone plates. Each sees the world differently, enables me to see my subjects differently, inspires me to reach for something that I cannot define other than in the context of the moment I'm making a photograph.

I'm not addicted to film, film cameras, digital, digital cameras, et al. I'm addicted to photographs, and use whatever I have at my disposal to make ones I find satisfying, on the caprice of a whim at a moment. That's all that matters.

G

"Equipment is transitory. Photographs endure."
​

 

[Tom R]

A better question might be: are we conditioned to believe that film is superior to digital process or that this is even a fair/meaningful comparison?

Personally, I choose to use film or digital capture depending upon what I need, where "need" includes aesthetics as well as more practical matters such as use, distribution, etc.

 

[raydm6]

Light addiction to film cameras. Like the aroma of film.

 

[Doug A]

Grew up shooting film. Haven't seen results from digital, everything considered, that would induce me to change.

 

[Godfrey]

I take it all back. I'm addicted to Polaroid SX-70 photographs...

Hangers - East Palo Alto 2021
Polaroid SLR670a by MiNT
​

😀

enjoy! G

 

[mike rosenlof]

I'm a software engineer. Spend all day with computers at work. After work I shoot film, no computers. Digital is **great** just not for me. I'll readily admit I have more cameras than I need, my buying spree was about 10 years ago when I *could* buy cameras that I could only dream about when I was younger. So yes, I enjoy turning the dials and hearing the gears whir. Software is *magic* in what it is able to do, but at one time that sound of a shutter timing a full second was just as magical.

 

[Beemermark]

In 50 years of photography and maybe 30 years of doing cameras shows as a seller/dealer I have a number of observations -


95% of buyers were men.
95% of sellers were men, usually the same ones buying.
This is the big one - probably 75% of the men from the camera shows were also buyers at gun shows. Any many of the camera dealers were gun sellers at the gun shows.


Men, over women. love finely crafted mechanical things. Cameras, guns, watches, and cars are probably the top four.

 

[Pál_K]

…
Men, over women. love finely crafted mechanical things. Cameras, guns, watches, and cars are probably the top four.

Thus is spoken TRVTH.