btgc
Veteran
Yesterday night I saw fragment form interview with Goran Bregovic, you know, he always is bit of sad, and he is so emphatic.
In moment I came into room he explained why he likes military trumpets in his orchestra - "they rarely are adjusted and because of this they sound...is very human".
Bang! So I thought about why I mess with film when digital on all accounts is very good to use. As far as I have tried digitals, they are just too complicated for me. This days I even don't use AF - not because it's bad or I do MF better - no, simply I like process itself, how straightforward it is and there's so thin layer of technology (if we omit fact how thick layer is film/chemicals itself).
I'm happy amateur having privilege having crappy pictures and not scared if I miss exposure or focus. So, I just like analogous nature. I like fact I can make mistakes, I can be imperfect, I can miss shots. Digital for me looks like precision, too much determination. This speaks more about me, not digital.
If I'd be professional wedding or what else photographer, sure I'd use digital - at least I think so.
In moment I came into room he explained why he likes military trumpets in his orchestra - "they rarely are adjusted and because of this they sound...is very human".
Bang! So I thought about why I mess with film when digital on all accounts is very good to use. As far as I have tried digitals, they are just too complicated for me. This days I even don't use AF - not because it's bad or I do MF better - no, simply I like process itself, how straightforward it is and there's so thin layer of technology (if we omit fact how thick layer is film/chemicals itself).
I'm happy amateur having privilege having crappy pictures and not scared if I miss exposure or focus. So, I just like analogous nature. I like fact I can make mistakes, I can be imperfect, I can miss shots. Digital for me looks like precision, too much determination. This speaks more about me, not digital.
If I'd be professional wedding or what else photographer, sure I'd use digital - at least I think so.
mfogiel
Veteran
For me, film is still winner hands down in B&W, and then film let's you use cameras that are actually much nicer to use than the DSLR's. Film cameras are an evolution of around 150 years of small incremental steps - the digital cameras just start getting improved.
btgc
Veteran
I'm even not discussing this
well, DSLR can be good....I don't have experience with them, but in few words - when I shot only P&S and RF's I thought SRL is evil - heavy, loud cyclope. Now I have two SLR bodies and find use for them. They aren't worse or better - they are weaker or stronger on some sides. So why not DSLR....I just like handling, feel, materials, way of use of old cameras.
There are people who smoke tobacco pipe and ignore cigarettes. Not necessary to live in wooden house and wear self-made clothes to smoke pipe.
nrb
Nuno Borges
My best weapon for street photography is hands down a rangefinder and film. And film can be converted to digital easily, and as many times as it may be convenient. You can scan anew all your films when a better scanner or software arises, but you get stuck with the technology you used to make your digital images forever.
Keith
The best camera is one that still works!
[I'm happy amateur having privilege having crappy pictures and not scared if I miss exposure or focus. So, I just like analogous nature. I like fact I can make mistakes, I can be imperfect, I can miss shots. Digital for me looks like precision, too much determination. This speaks more about me, not digital.]
I agree with this to a point ... but I've discovered my M8 can deliver images occasionally that are far from perfect exposure wise and if shot at high ISO start to develop a character of their own when you post process them. I was working on some chronically underexposed shots the other night and trying to see what could be salvaged to save the image. What lurks in the shadows in raw files can be amazing at times and in the process of attempting to get detail from these potential write offs with extraction and various filters you can finish up with something that wasn't really what you intended but is still visually appealing.
My M8 has shown me that digital doesn't have to have a sterile look if you're prepared to experiment a little. Don't get me wrong here ... film still has my vote but I'm starting to realise that if you're willing to push the limits with digital it can have a personallity that is all it's own.
I agree with this to a point ... but I've discovered my M8 can deliver images occasionally that are far from perfect exposure wise and if shot at high ISO start to develop a character of their own when you post process them. I was working on some chronically underexposed shots the other night and trying to see what could be salvaged to save the image. What lurks in the shadows in raw files can be amazing at times and in the process of attempting to get detail from these potential write offs with extraction and various filters you can finish up with something that wasn't really what you intended but is still visually appealing.
My M8 has shown me that digital doesn't have to have a sterile look if you're prepared to experiment a little. Don't get me wrong here ... film still has my vote but I'm starting to realise that if you're willing to push the limits with digital it can have a personallity that is all it's own.
__hh
Well-known
This is so true for me. It's taken me a long time to realize that I don't have to have perfectly sharp photos taken at ISO100 every time. I find myself using the 5D/R-D1s at ISO 800 and even 1600 without any worries about noise.
noimmunity
scratch my niche
As an amateur, I, too, prefer film, both for the look and the handling.
ClaremontPhoto
Jon Claremont
A bunch of twentysomethings two nights ago, having dinner, partying too, asked me to photograph them.
I did the photos, and arranged to return to the same place on Thursday with prints.
They all had camera phones themselves.
I did the photos, and arranged to return to the same place on Thursday with prints.
They all had camera phones themselves.
maddoc
... likes film again.
This sounds more like a debate "auto-everything" vs. "strictly-manual" to me ...
For sure you can get the same crappy, blurred, and wrong exposed with a high-end DSLR and some effort by just setting it to all-manual. Why I prefer film is because "digital" looks plastic to me. Not perfect or precise just "all spruced up" (if this is the correct expression). Additionally, film survives for some decades (at least BW when properly processed) while electronically archived data may either be gone or not accessible in the near future.
Most important, film is more fun ! The process of developing (and wet-printing) adds to creating a photo.
telenous
Well-known
I was thinking the other day something very similar to Maddoc's 'spruced up' view: in both media images are composites from discrete units (i.e. grain and pixels). In the case of digital the units are evenly allocated and are even in size. While with film they are uneven in both cases. Which accounts for a kind of difference that you cannot actually point in some area of the image to make apparent to the naked and unaided eye - but one that becomes apparent when you look at the image as a whole, in the way it 'feels'.
Which is I guess also another way of saying what Bregovic said, in his case for music.
Which is I guess also another way of saying what Bregovic said, in his case for music.
infrequent
Well-known
@telenous - also apparent in cinemas. the newer crop of movies using digital production vs movies shot on film. look at 'starwars - episode 3' and 'the painted veil' for instance. very different feel and ambience.
telenous
Well-known
As I understand it Lucas is a big proponent of digital for cinema. Spielberg on the other hand, isn't. I think he went at great length to convince Lucas to shoot the latest Indy on film stock. The reason was, among other things (e.g. Spielberg's love for film in a way that is not entirely foreign to members of this forum) that he thought he could recreate more faithfully the filmic look of colour movies from the 50's.
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photophorous
Registered User
There are many reasons, but the biggest for me is that it forces me to slow down and think about what I'm doing, and as a result, I take better photos. Manual focus is part of that. Yeah, I know, I could do that with digital, but I usually don't. Second reason is rangefinders...I can't afford a digital one, but I love the size to quality ratio. Third reason is that I like the look of film, especially black and white. I like the variety of different "looks" you can get from different films. I also like the anticipation of not knowing what I got until I get it developed. I hated that when I was first learning, but once I understood the fundamentals, that became a good thing.
Paul
Paul
Encinalense
Established
I agree with a lot of what folks have already said -- and I especially enjoy the element of anticipation noted by photophorous -- but the attraction to film is for me also rooted in the real, physical connection between the subject and the film. That relationship, though it may indeed be mediated by layers of chemistry I only partially understand, is fundamentally direct and tactile. The route from the imaging chip -- a phenomenally cool bit of tech, I admit -- to the lcd alone winds through ponderously inhuman canals of digits, the image having been recorded as non-physical information inaccessible to me and then translated back so that I might better understand it than I do rows upon rows of ones and zeros.
But then I'm the type of guy who takes things apart to see how they work. And that's never any fun with digital cameras.
But then I'm the type of guy who takes things apart to see how they work. And that's never any fun with digital cameras.
Tuolumne
Veteran
When joy riding is more important than getting to the destination
When joy riding is more important than getting to the destination
Ultimately the "why" of film comes down to liking the journey more than the destination. Ever since the 100-year old Kodak motto, "You press the button, we do the rest", picture taking has been headed for the nirvana of digital photography: "You press the button and there is nothing left to do". For those of us for whom the method of photography is as important as the final result, film will continue to be important.
There was an interesting article in the WSJ yesterday about Lufthansa refurbishing old airliners and selling tickets to joy riders who relish the old-fashioned experience of flying in a vintage aircraft. Except for those who prefer the look of film over digital, and really I think that is a small and shrinking number, especially since there are fewer and fewer who have even seen film(!), the main reason for shooting film is relishing the experience of using the medium and the fine "old-fashioned" products that made it possible. There's nothing wrong with that, as Lufthansa has learned. It is also interesting to note that the article refers to the German mastery of mechanical engineering as being a core competence that Lufthansa can draw on in refurbishing these vintage planes.
Lufthansa's Labor of Love:
Restoring Some Really Old Junkers
[FONT=Times New Roman,Times,Serif]Antique Aircraft Are a Company Sideline;
A Salvage Mission to Auburn, Maine[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times,serif][FONT=times new roman,times,serif]By DANIEL MICHAELS
June 16, 2008; Page A1[/FONT]
[/FONT]
HAMBURG, Germany -- After inspecting the latest addition to Lufthansa's fleet, veteran airplane mechanic Jürgen Rohwer braced himself for hard work ahead.
"This is the most complicated aircraft we could get," said the silver-haired 67-year-old engineer, studying pictures of cockpit controls and wiring at the headquarters of Deutsche Lufthansa AG's maintenance unit here.
WSJ's Dan Michaels reports how German carrier Lufthansa refurbished a 1936 Junkers 52 propeller plane and then sold thousands of tickets to people wanting an old-fashioned joyride. But Mr. Rohwer isn't working on a cutting-edge Airbus or Boeing jetliner. The task at hand demands far more ingenuity: resurrecting a grounded Eisenhower-era Lockheed propeller plane.
Lufthansa flies some of the world's newest jetliners. But it also has a unique sideline rebuilding and flying antique aircraft. Enthusiasts wait months and pay €259 ($400) for a bumpy hourlong ride on a 1936 Junkers-52 propeller plane that Lufthansa bought in 1986. The 16-seat Ju-52 is so delicate that engineers rebuild it each winter to ensure safety.
Work is starting now on the Lockheed 1649A Super Constellation "Starliner," which Mr. Rohwer's bosses bought at a bankruptcy auction in Maine last December. They hope to start flying it in 2010.
Once, many carriers maintained their antiques to show off, but years of financial pressure have put an end to most of that. Today, it's mainly consumer companies like Swiss watchmaker Breitling SA and Austrian energy-drink maker Red Bull GmbH that pay to recondition aviation relics as flying billboards.
Lufthansa, whose jetliner operations are profitable, can afford its costly projects partly because active and retired employees volunteer to reconstruct, maintain and fly the old planes. In a country that produces some of the world's finest cars, sleekest home appliances and most-precise industrial tools, mechanical savviness is a badge of honor.
Capt. Georg Spieth, 51, is one of 20 top Lufthansa pilots who fly the Ju-52 in their spare time. "We're quite lucky to do this," he said before taking it up recently. "There's a really long list of captains waiting to fly it."
Capt. Spieth's wife, Ingrid, volunteers as the plane's flight attendant.
Maintenance Crew
Mr. Rohwer, whose two sons are Lufthansa mechanics, was selected from dozens of volunteers to help resuscitate the Starliner. In addition to decades of work modernizing jetliner cockpits for Lufthansa, the old-timer has a special qualification: He served on crews maintaining Lufthansa's Starliners in the 1960s.
Lufthansa The standard Starliner carried 86 passengers, but a swankier version could carry just 30 high-flyers in supreme luxury. Back then, Lufthansa marketed the Starliner as its "Super Star." A Starliner flew the longest-duration scheduled flight ever, a 23-hour-19-minute trip from London to San Francisco -- a hop jetliners now cover in less than half the time.
Lufthansa's standard Starliner flew 86 passengers, but a swankier version carried 30 highfliers in luxury. Some slept in beds, behind curtains. Newfangled in-flight entertainment included tape players and loudspeakers.
Onboard Chef
An onboard chef, squeezed into a small kitchen, whipped up meals to suit passengers' whims. German delicacies served included potato pancakes, "a dish highly appreciated and frequently requested by passengers," according to Lufthansa's corporate history.
The Starliner, introduced in 1956, was the last of many Constellation versions Lockheed built over 16 years. Each had increasingly elaborate equipment such as autopilot systems, hydraulic pumps and windscreen defrosters.
The complicated four-engine Starliner had lots of problems, Mr. Rohwer recalls. The plane's massive 3,000-horsepower engines -- designed for optimal performance high in the sky -- overheated regularly on the ground. The plane's violent vibration snapped wires. Spark plugs crusted over. Starliners frequently returned to the airfield shortly after takeoff because of technical difficulties. None of the planes ever crashed.
"We had lots of trouble with that aircraft," recalled Mr. Rohwer, who joined Lufthansa in 1957 at age 16 and retired from the airline's maintenance arm, Lufthansa Technik, two years ago.
ON THE JOB
Engineering Veteran Plays Key Role
"Some people say this was the best three-engine plane ever, because one engine was always out," chuckled Mr. Rohwer.
Starliners last flew in the 1970s, but the iconic plane continued attracting fans. In the 1980s, Maurice Roundy, a 63-year-old pilot, aircraft mechanic and airfield manager in Auburn, Maine, bought three Starliners for their scrap value. He started rebuilding them, but after spending $500,000 of his own money on the effort, he ran out of cash and last year filed for bankruptcy-court protection.
"I think the airplanes owned me," said Mr. Roundy, who paid his debts by getting rid of the planes.
Headed to Auction
When Lufthansa Technik Chief Executive August Henningsen heard that three Starliners would go under the gavel, he jumped into action. After inspecting the planes last November in Maine and Florida, Mr. Henningsen sent his deputies to the auction in December. Slowed by a Maine snowstorm, they arrived just in time to land the three planes for a bid of $745,000.50.
Lufthansa now plans to fully restore one Starliner in Auburn, using parts cannibalized from the other two.
To prepare, Mr. Rohwer spent two weeks in January in Auburn and at the offices of Lockheed Martin Corp. in Texas. Lockheed archivists found 11,000 boxes of the plane's engineering drawings, certification documents and maintenance records that Mr. Rohwer and his colleagues will use for their work.
Mr. Rohwer, a private pilot who builds model steam trains for fun, will handle the Starliner's cockpit. To get the plane certified by air-safety regulators in the U.S. and Europe, Lufthansa will install modern flight controls, as it has done on the Junkers.
New Control Panel
For safety's sake, Mr. Rohwer must include similar consoles, dials and switches as a giant Boeing 747 has on its flight deck. To cram them into the Starliner's far smaller space, Mr. Rohwer says he will use a handful of digital screens that can replicate dozens of different control panels.
Since the Starliner sits an ocean away in Maine, Mr. Rohwer's team will first install equipment in a cockpit mock-up in Hamburg. Then they'll ship that to Maine and rewire it directly to cables and hydraulic pumps that other engineers are refurbishing.
While the cockpit will glow with modern electronics, the passenger cabin will evoke a bygone era. Walls will be covered in beige leather. The large round windows will have fabric curtains.
"The cabin will look like the 1950s -- but with seat belts," promises Bernhard Conrad, who is running the project and also is chairman of the Lufthansa nonprofit foundation that owns the old planes.
Mr. Rohwer says he isn't interested in flying on the Starliner. He'd rather just hear the engines' low rumble as the plane cruises slowly by.
"The most unusual thing is the sound," recalls the mechanic. "It's much more interesting than being onboard."
When joy riding is more important than getting to the destination
Ultimately the "why" of film comes down to liking the journey more than the destination. Ever since the 100-year old Kodak motto, "You press the button, we do the rest", picture taking has been headed for the nirvana of digital photography: "You press the button and there is nothing left to do". For those of us for whom the method of photography is as important as the final result, film will continue to be important.
There was an interesting article in the WSJ yesterday about Lufthansa refurbishing old airliners and selling tickets to joy riders who relish the old-fashioned experience of flying in a vintage aircraft. Except for those who prefer the look of film over digital, and really I think that is a small and shrinking number, especially since there are fewer and fewer who have even seen film(!), the main reason for shooting film is relishing the experience of using the medium and the fine "old-fashioned" products that made it possible. There's nothing wrong with that, as Lufthansa has learned. It is also interesting to note that the article refers to the German mastery of mechanical engineering as being a core competence that Lufthansa can draw on in refurbishing these vintage planes.
Lufthansa's Labor of Love:
Restoring Some Really Old Junkers
[FONT=Times New Roman,Times,Serif]Antique Aircraft Are a Company Sideline;
A Salvage Mission to Auburn, Maine[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times,serif][FONT=times new roman,times,serif]By DANIEL MICHAELS
June 16, 2008; Page A1[/FONT]
[/FONT]
HAMBURG, Germany -- After inspecting the latest addition to Lufthansa's fleet, veteran airplane mechanic Jürgen Rohwer braced himself for hard work ahead.
"This is the most complicated aircraft we could get," said the silver-haired 67-year-old engineer, studying pictures of cockpit controls and wiring at the headquarters of Deutsche Lufthansa AG's maintenance unit here.
WSJ's Dan Michaels reports how German carrier Lufthansa refurbished a 1936 Junkers 52 propeller plane and then sold thousands of tickets to people wanting an old-fashioned joyride. But Mr. Rohwer isn't working on a cutting-edge Airbus or Boeing jetliner. The task at hand demands far more ingenuity: resurrecting a grounded Eisenhower-era Lockheed propeller plane.
Lufthansa flies some of the world's newest jetliners. But it also has a unique sideline rebuilding and flying antique aircraft. Enthusiasts wait months and pay €259 ($400) for a bumpy hourlong ride on a 1936 Junkers-52 propeller plane that Lufthansa bought in 1986. The 16-seat Ju-52 is so delicate that engineers rebuild it each winter to ensure safety.
Work is starting now on the Lockheed 1649A Super Constellation "Starliner," which Mr. Rohwer's bosses bought at a bankruptcy auction in Maine last December. They hope to start flying it in 2010.
Once, many carriers maintained their antiques to show off, but years of financial pressure have put an end to most of that. Today, it's mainly consumer companies like Swiss watchmaker Breitling SA and Austrian energy-drink maker Red Bull GmbH that pay to recondition aviation relics as flying billboards.
Lufthansa, whose jetliner operations are profitable, can afford its costly projects partly because active and retired employees volunteer to reconstruct, maintain and fly the old planes. In a country that produces some of the world's finest cars, sleekest home appliances and most-precise industrial tools, mechanical savviness is a badge of honor.
Capt. Georg Spieth, 51, is one of 20 top Lufthansa pilots who fly the Ju-52 in their spare time. "We're quite lucky to do this," he said before taking it up recently. "There's a really long list of captains waiting to fly it."
Capt. Spieth's wife, Ingrid, volunteers as the plane's flight attendant.
Maintenance Crew
Mr. Rohwer, whose two sons are Lufthansa mechanics, was selected from dozens of volunteers to help resuscitate the Starliner. In addition to decades of work modernizing jetliner cockpits for Lufthansa, the old-timer has a special qualification: He served on crews maintaining Lufthansa's Starliners in the 1960s.
Lufthansa The standard Starliner carried 86 passengers, but a swankier version could carry just 30 high-flyers in supreme luxury. Back then, Lufthansa marketed the Starliner as its "Super Star." A Starliner flew the longest-duration scheduled flight ever, a 23-hour-19-minute trip from London to San Francisco -- a hop jetliners now cover in less than half the time.Lufthansa's standard Starliner flew 86 passengers, but a swankier version carried 30 highfliers in luxury. Some slept in beds, behind curtains. Newfangled in-flight entertainment included tape players and loudspeakers.
Onboard Chef
An onboard chef, squeezed into a small kitchen, whipped up meals to suit passengers' whims. German delicacies served included potato pancakes, "a dish highly appreciated and frequently requested by passengers," according to Lufthansa's corporate history.
The Starliner, introduced in 1956, was the last of many Constellation versions Lockheed built over 16 years. Each had increasingly elaborate equipment such as autopilot systems, hydraulic pumps and windscreen defrosters.
The complicated four-engine Starliner had lots of problems, Mr. Rohwer recalls. The plane's massive 3,000-horsepower engines -- designed for optimal performance high in the sky -- overheated regularly on the ground. The plane's violent vibration snapped wires. Spark plugs crusted over. Starliners frequently returned to the airfield shortly after takeoff because of technical difficulties. None of the planes ever crashed.
"We had lots of trouble with that aircraft," recalled Mr. Rohwer, who joined Lufthansa in 1957 at age 16 and retired from the airline's maintenance arm, Lufthansa Technik, two years ago.
Engineering Veteran Plays Key Role
"Some people say this was the best three-engine plane ever, because one engine was always out," chuckled Mr. Rohwer.
Starliners last flew in the 1970s, but the iconic plane continued attracting fans. In the 1980s, Maurice Roundy, a 63-year-old pilot, aircraft mechanic and airfield manager in Auburn, Maine, bought three Starliners for their scrap value. He started rebuilding them, but after spending $500,000 of his own money on the effort, he ran out of cash and last year filed for bankruptcy-court protection.
"I think the airplanes owned me," said Mr. Roundy, who paid his debts by getting rid of the planes.
Headed to Auction
When Lufthansa Technik Chief Executive August Henningsen heard that three Starliners would go under the gavel, he jumped into action. After inspecting the planes last November in Maine and Florida, Mr. Henningsen sent his deputies to the auction in December. Slowed by a Maine snowstorm, they arrived just in time to land the three planes for a bid of $745,000.50.
Lufthansa now plans to fully restore one Starliner in Auburn, using parts cannibalized from the other two.
To prepare, Mr. Rohwer spent two weeks in January in Auburn and at the offices of Lockheed Martin Corp. in Texas. Lockheed archivists found 11,000 boxes of the plane's engineering drawings, certification documents and maintenance records that Mr. Rohwer and his colleagues will use for their work.
Mr. Rohwer, a private pilot who builds model steam trains for fun, will handle the Starliner's cockpit. To get the plane certified by air-safety regulators in the U.S. and Europe, Lufthansa will install modern flight controls, as it has done on the Junkers.
New Control Panel
For safety's sake, Mr. Rohwer must include similar consoles, dials and switches as a giant Boeing 747 has on its flight deck. To cram them into the Starliner's far smaller space, Mr. Rohwer says he will use a handful of digital screens that can replicate dozens of different control panels.
Since the Starliner sits an ocean away in Maine, Mr. Rohwer's team will first install equipment in a cockpit mock-up in Hamburg. Then they'll ship that to Maine and rewire it directly to cables and hydraulic pumps that other engineers are refurbishing.
While the cockpit will glow with modern electronics, the passenger cabin will evoke a bygone era. Walls will be covered in beige leather. The large round windows will have fabric curtains.
"The cabin will look like the 1950s -- but with seat belts," promises Bernhard Conrad, who is running the project and also is chairman of the Lufthansa nonprofit foundation that owns the old planes.
Mr. Rohwer says he isn't interested in flying on the Starliner. He'd rather just hear the engines' low rumble as the plane cruises slowly by.
"The most unusual thing is the sound," recalls the mechanic. "It's much more interesting than being onboard."
al1966
Feed Your Head
For me its simple i get the colour I want from film, although I have to admit I prefer using older cameras.
WoolenMammoth
Well-known
I recently got back from a trip and finished processing 1400 ish frames of film. Ive slowly been scanning them for the last 3 weeks. In the last year I have exposed, developed and scanned now pushing 16,000 frames for a portrait project Im working on.
The INSTANT that digital cameras can provide me with a look Im satisfied with I will *gladly* never use film again. Looking at my budgeting, it would be a savings of THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of hours in labor of loading casettes, developing and scanning to just plug a video camera in and have the pictures on a hard drive.
Alas, they look totally different and for me in a who cares kind of way, so Im still shooting film. And despite my gripes, happy to be doing it.
In so far as shooting film in the movies is concerned (which is my day job) we are on the verge of that going away forever, certainly in the next 20 years. With the current technology all of the associated strobing on lateral movement is now gone and ever since some genius introduced the concept of hooking your video camera up to ground glass between the ccd and the lens, the depth of field issues of video have improved and just stand to get better. David Fincher has done his last two movies on video. I didnt know that Zodiac was not shot on film and it didnt occur to me that was the case when I saw the movie projected. Of course when you go back and look at it you can pick out some hot spots in the lattitude of the camera, but its still damn impressive. Apparently the Brad Pitt thing he did last year in NO is supposed to look even better. HD was a bomb for TV here in nyc, vitrtually everyone who switched was back on super 16 within two seasons, but the end is definitely near, its just a matter of economy.
The INSTANT that digital cameras can provide me with a look Im satisfied with I will *gladly* never use film again. Looking at my budgeting, it would be a savings of THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of hours in labor of loading casettes, developing and scanning to just plug a video camera in and have the pictures on a hard drive.
Alas, they look totally different and for me in a who cares kind of way, so Im still shooting film. And despite my gripes, happy to be doing it.
In so far as shooting film in the movies is concerned (which is my day job) we are on the verge of that going away forever, certainly in the next 20 years. With the current technology all of the associated strobing on lateral movement is now gone and ever since some genius introduced the concept of hooking your video camera up to ground glass between the ccd and the lens, the depth of field issues of video have improved and just stand to get better. David Fincher has done his last two movies on video. I didnt know that Zodiac was not shot on film and it didnt occur to me that was the case when I saw the movie projected. Of course when you go back and look at it you can pick out some hot spots in the lattitude of the camera, but its still damn impressive. Apparently the Brad Pitt thing he did last year in NO is supposed to look even better. HD was a bomb for TV here in nyc, vitrtually everyone who switched was back on super 16 within two seasons, but the end is definitely near, its just a matter of economy.
photogdave
Shops local
Too bad he couldn't convince Lucas not to put in stupid CG rodents!
NickTrop
Veteran
For me...
Film - tastes great
Digital - less filling...
I prefer the great taste of filum to the less filling digital sensors.
|
Film - tastes great
Digital - less filling...
I prefer the great taste of filum to the less filling digital sensors.
|
Darren Abate
Professional Shooter
Unfortunately, though, Spielberg decided against doing the SFX in the Old Ways, and went with blue screens and CG instead of traditional matte painting and location photography. I saw an interview with him in which he stated that he originally wanted to do that, but in the end he decided that the story would be "better served" by going digital. It sounds to me like he let Lucas get to him instead of listening to his gut. I wish he hadn't done that.