Digital - Film -Digital, what happened?

pepeguitarra

pepeguitarra

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I really like posting here, so much brain power that makes things easier for many. I am a recent re-convert to Film, after having re-started photography about five years ago with digital cameras. In the 60s, as a teenager, I had my own rustic dark room to develop and print black and white photography. The readiness (almost point and shoot) capabilities of the new digital cameras made everything easy. As some one advised: Stay with digital and just try to improve your knowledge and style of photography. But, no, I had to choose the manual way (maybe is because retirement is close and I want to slow down the time, everything has gone so fast!). So, although I still keep my M8.2/M9 for the usual family affair, or when I need some good color photography, I decided to concentrate in my black and white photography. That is how I got the M3 and M2. So far, I am trying to catch up to the past by reading and getting familiar with my old books.

However, I have noticed that some folks went back to film and apparently changed their minds and are going back to digital. Something made them quit the film. What can it be? So far, I do not see myself abandoning what I just restarted, but I would like to know. If you or someone you know, of if you have a thought about this, can you comment on what the reasons may be for someone to go back to film full enthusiasm, only to drop it after few months and go back to digital.
 
pepeguitarra said:
However, I have noticed that some folks went back to film and apparently changed their minds and are going back to digital. Something made them quit the film. What can it be? So far, I do not see myself abandoning what I just restarted, but I would like to know. If you or someone you know, of if you have a thought about this, can you comment on what the reasons may be for someone to go back to film full enthusiasm, only to drop it after few months and go back to digital.
Click to expand...

Let us know who this is? I've only seen the opposite trend (including myself - although my trip was simply digital -> film).

Obviously there's always a bunch of people who simply want to buy stuff, and the film gear is just the manifestation of GAS, and maybe others who can't stick out the more challenging medium. But as a whole, I haven't seen a single person going back.

Incidentally, my local experience is mostly with a younger crowd who also have only experienced digital before switching to film. Maybe the backsliders are just an older group, trying nostalgically to recapture some aspect of their youth, and finding that film doesn't do it for them, after all.
 
Went from film to digital to film and now thinking about digital again. When I left film the first time it was because I wanted the more immediate return, the idea to take more photos without the increased cost. But having to spend all the time behind the pc, the limited way to look at your photos compared to slides and the then real limitations of digital made me turn back to film and medium format.

I enjoyed the ride with medium format, leared a lot about exposure and really had fun again. But right now it has become impossible to get anything else than 100 iso slide film, it has become easier to get your digital photos on a tv (and they have become better as well), scanning is a royal pita and FF cameras are affordable. Come to it that 95% of the time the ooc jpeg is more than good enough, that is better than a scanned slide.

But all this took more or less 12 years, not a couple of months.

The only thing I really miss is a digital camera that has the immediate interface of a film one.
 
The way I see it is everyone needs to do whatever they can to keep it fun for themselves and also use what fits your photographic vision (if you even care to have one). Film, digital... it's all photography and it all works. Any minutiae is a personal preference.

As far as using one for a few months and then switching... artist do that kind of thing all of the time. It comes down to using what works best for a project. Film isn't exotic to me... I learned photography using film when it was the mainstream way to do so. I have no romanticized notions about film or the darkroom (I have done B&W, C-Prints, Cibachromes, Van Dyke, Cyanotypes). The cameras are cool though.

Personally, I currently love digital... and I have loved film. Right now, digital suits what I want out of photography. However, there could be a time when a project calls for film. If it does, I have no issue doing it. A Mamiya 6 would likely be the camera.
 
A few years ago, I have been among the first proponents of a monochrome Leica. The Leica guys perhaps were listening, so they delivered. While I have no problem to admit that on some accounts ( resolution, high ISO shots ) the monochrom Leicas are doing a fine job, I could not see in the pictures the two things that I was instinctively hoping to find: the nuanced gradations and the grain. I've realised, that I do not want a digital camera that makes photos similar to film - I simply want film. I like the slowness of the process, I like the archival function of the negatives and I like the images. The only part of the process that I keep modern is the printed output, which comes from pigment prints after scanning. For some time I was considering to go large format and make contacts, but then I've read some of the LF guys claiming that their scanned prints look better than their contacts, so I've limited myself to 35mm and MF. Since then, I see film output as naturally "less modern" than digital, which has helped me to appreciate shooting with a Holga and pinhole/zone plate cameras as well. In other words, I have become an ALTERNATE PROCESS guy, in the sense that film is as different from digital as platinum prints were different from wet collodion. My only digital shots are made occasionally with my phone when I need to remember the reading of my water counter.

MF20155703 by marek fogiel, on Flickr
 
I started using film in 1976 as a kid and still use it today. BTW I still got my very first camera, a Minolta SR7 given to me by my parents.
Since then I'm also using digital, mostly M8.2 and still love both processes.
 
mani said:
Let us know who this is?
Click to expand...

Why, are you going to beat them up? 🙂

I actually found at least three people selling their gear recently because of the move back to digital.

Back to other comments, I found that my computer has about 8,000 shots in a special hard disk. I am sure (I am an aficionado!) a small percentage of those has some artistic value, most of them are just momentos of the family or trips. A large percentage of them are of poor quality. I never get to see them, in fact, no body does.

With film, it is different, before I spend the $0.50 on each shot (film + development), I think if the shot is worth the half/dollar. Many times it is not.
So, I am more careful now with the shooting.
 
pepeguitarra said:
...
Back to other comments, I found that my computer has about 8,000 shots in a special hard disk. I am sure (I am an aficionado!) a small percentage of those has some artistic value, most of them are just momentos of the family or trips. A large percentage of them are of poor quality. I never get to see them, in fact, no body does.

With film, it is different, before I spend the $0.50 on each shot (film + development), I think if the shot is worth the half/dollar. Many times it is not.
So, I am more careful now with the shooting.
Click to expand...

You should solve that problem with all those photos that are sitting unseen.

If you apply the same thinking process when you use your digital camera that you do when you use your film camera, you'll find yourself getting equally good numbers of keepers. The problem is neither the cameras nor the recording medium.

G
 
Marek, thanks for posting this lovely image. I love its romantic quality. Well done!

The image does bring to my mind the question of what it is that creates the "digital" or "film" look that is often discussed/debated here at RFF. Your image represents to my eye not so much something created by film, but rather qualities created by the lens.

After all these years of looking at images (my own, and thousands posted on the web by others), I still cannot see any distinct "film" or "digital" qualities. My brain/eye always sees images as being made of the qualities created by a lens and by tonal/color qualities. None of these seem to my eye to be related in any significant degree to the capturing medium (film or digital sensor).

I often wonder if a person's response to an image being "digital" is only because it has a sharpness not experienced in the days of "film" and whether that quality is not a result of being "digital" but instead due to the greater sharpness of modern lens design and supporting in-camera software.

mfogiel said:
A few years ago, I have been among the first proponents of a monochrome Leica. The Leica guys perhaps were listening, so they delivered. While I have no problem to admit that on some accounts ( resolution, high ISO shots ) the monochrom Leicas are doing a fine job, I could not see in the pictures the two things that I was instinctively hoping to find: the nuanced gradations and the grain. I've realised, that I do not want a digital camera that makes photos similar to film - I simply want film. I like the slowness of the process, I like the archival function of the negatives and I like the images. The only part of the process that I keep modern is the printed output, which comes from pigment prints after scanning. For some time I was considering to go large format and make contacts, but then I've read some of the LF guys claiming that their scanned prints look better than their contacts, so I've limited myself to 35mm and MF. Since then, I see film output as naturally "less modern" than digital, which has helped me to appreciate shooting with a Holga and pinhole/zone plate cameras as well. In other words, I have become an ALTERNATE PROCESS guy, in the sense that film is as different from digital as platinum prints were different from wet collodion. My only digital shots are made occasionally with my phone when I need to remember the reading of my water counter.

MF20155703 by marek fogiel, on Flickr
Click to expand...
 
Been shooting since the late 60's.
I do some digital with a D700, D300s, and Fuji X100T.
They are at times very convenient for specific tasks I need done quickly, such as photo'ing for estate inventories.
But my main love is film.
Digital is the reason that today we have so few film choices and processing facilities.
So you might say I have a love/hate relationship with digital.
Just my two cents.
 
Jamie Pillers said:
I often wonder if a person's response to an image being "digital" is only because it has a sharpness not experienced in the days of "film" and whether that quality is not a result of being "digital" but instead due to the greater sharpness of modern lens design and supporting in-camera software.
Click to expand...

I think it's in response to the clean images (or perfectness) digital gives while many people like the grain in film (or the imperfections). I would also think that film has an inherent distinct color palette that is harder to change than digital... and one color temperature vs. digital's ability to be any color temperature.
 
I appreciate the convenience of digital, and I do use it when that's the appropriate tool, but if i'm just shooting for me, I like to work with film, despite any inconveniences or tedious processes, because for me, it's those very processes that interest me the most.

I'm young, but I started with film and transitioned to digital around 2005, only to miss film so much that I started to reincorporate it into my workflow again around 2009 and haven't stopped since.

I do want to get a darkroom setup, or at least have access to one as that's the last step of the process that I miss the most.
 
There's nothing I want to do that can't be done on film, except take lots of trivial photos for selling things on ebay.
 
jsrockit said:
and the enemy of experimentation.
Click to expand...

This is the opposite of my experience. I have hundreds of thousands of digital images that I hardly ever look at. Some of them I've messed around with, either in the act of capture or afterwards with Photoshop, but I'm hardly interested in looking at them, and they taught me nothing.
My real experimentation - where I try to extend my photography to be something meaningful - has come when I changed to film.

But I agree with John - these film vs digital threads are mind-numbingly tedious.
 
For when I want to look at the photos taken immediately - digital
For when I want the photos to marinate for some time - film

They're both equally costly (time vs cost) and I enjoy using both.

If I were to choose one medium only - why would I EVER do that?
 
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