dslr vs film camera thoughts

[gerikson]

I love using film cameras right up until I press the shutter. After that, I prefer digital 😉

 

[Bike Tourist]

Well, I continue to show up here, even though most of my shooting these days is accomplished with the D700 and only a little with my Bessa R2, my token nod to my long history with rangefinders.

I participate here because I like the high tone and interesting dialog on RFF. Also, people come in and interact here as opposed to, say, DSLR eXchange, where someone might comment to you every six months or so.

 

[monochromeimages]

I love using film cameras right up until I press the shutter. After that, I prefer digital 😉

For me the opposite is true. It makes little difference whether the image is being recorded on film or a digital sensor. The act of taking the photograph is essentially the same. It's what comes after which matters to me. I really enjoy the whole developing and wet printing process and have no interest at all in digital post processing and printing (I started out in photography 100% digital and have done lots of it but have never looked back since I 'discovered' film/wet printing.) In fact if I could come up with a way to make wet prints from digital files I would probably shoot more digital.

 

[Steve M.]

You are right about the skills needed for good film photography, along w/ a testing process to find the best lens for you. But don't get too excited about the ease of digital. If you shoot B&W, as your moniker suggests, you're only going to get 2/3rd of the image quality too w/ a digital. Besides, $40 will buy you a spiffy Nikon N6006 film camera w/ AF, AE, AE lock, spot, center and matrix metering, and it too will effortlessly spit out photos w/ nailed exposures. But what it will do that no dslr can do is this: put a $30 lens adapter on your Leica R lens, mount it on the Nikon, load it w/ Tri-X, and use the camera in A mode for dead on AE metering. You lose the AF but still get everything I mentioned. Astounding images from a $400 camera/lens w/ modern motor film advance added to the things I mentioned. It's the SLR Leica should have made.

 

[Sonnar2]

35mm film never was what real artists (like Ansel Adams or Jock Sturges) preferred as a format (anyway if RF or SLR).
35mm is a practical format, quite good usable with telephotos, wideangle or macro work, and it was (a time ago) the best for street scene shooting. It delivers sufficient results on a small film format when good lenses attached and good film ist used, and good care was taken in the lab.
Now it's overhauled in ALL of these advantages by digital imaging.
Now there are DSLRs providing 100,000ISO/ASA sensors, allowing photographing in deeper darkness as every highspeed lenses alone. This probably will change imagery as Oskar Barnacks small format camera in the 1930's, or the cell phone cameras in the last couple of years.
Using film cameras just for fun, recovery or technical exercise is another story.
There was a time when there was no other tool (or you didn't get the picture). This era is over. I am not sure if the pragmatic tool of the past will be a philosophical cure in the future. Maybe I sell some of my seldom used gear to gain a new EOS5-II, for sake of imagery.

cheers, F.

 

[chris00nj]

seems to me, after 15+ years of using film cameras, the skills needed to make a shot "successful" were threefold:

1. technical skill w/ the machine itself - manually setting shutterspeed, aperture, etc.

2. artistic skill - composition, timing, etc.

3. more technical skill - nuances in the development of the film - choice of chemicals, duration, etc.

i just got a canon 5d mk ii. great shots with great ease - but seems like 2/3 of the skills that i was actively using previously are no longer necessary. it's a really expensive point-and-shoot.....

I hear ya. There's a lot of people who decide they are going to instantly become professional photographer because they can point a camera and press a button.

There is still technical skill involved in being a real photographer even with a DSLR such as lighting, panning or flash techniques.

 

[Roger Hicks]

35mm film never was what real artists (like Ansel Adams or Jock Sturges) preferred as a format (anyway if RF or SLR).
35mm is a practical format, quite good usable with telephotos, wideangle or macro work, and it was (a time ago) the best for street scene shooting. It delivers sufficient results on a small film format when good lenses attached and good film ist used, and good care was taken in the lab.
Now it's overhauled in ALL of these advantages by digital imaging.
Now there are DSLRs providing 100,000ISO/ASA sensors, allowing photographing in deeper darkness as every highspeed lenses alone. This probably will change imagery as Oskar Barnacks small format camera in the 1930's, or the cell phone cameras in the last couple of years.
Using film cameras just for fun, recovery or technical exercise is another story.
There was a time when there was no other tool (or you didn't get the picture). This era is over. I am not sure if the pragmatic tool of the past will be a philosophical cure in the future. Maybe I sell some of my seldom used gear to gain a new EOS5-II, for sake of imagery.

cheers, F.

Not people like Cartier Bresson, then, or Ernst Haas, or Sebastiao Salgado, or Aleksandr Rodchenko or... Well, why bother to go on? Do you define AA or Sturgess as 'real artists' on the basis of their subject matter, or the fact that they used big cameras? Or some other criterion? Whatever it is, it is an impossibly restrictive view. Artists use what artists use. Some have (or will have) switched to digital. Others haven't/won't.

Cheers,

R.

 

[gns]

I hear ya. There's a lot of people who decide they are going to instantly become professional photographer because they can point a camera and press a button.

There is still technical skill involved in being a real photographer even with a DSLR such as lighting, panning or flash techniques.

"...because they can point the camera and press the button". Ah, but can they?

I often hear people inflating the importance of the technical side of things and down-playing the "Pointing and shooting" part. Anyone who has tried to make good pictures knows that the pointing is by far the hardest and most important part. Just about anyone can gain technical proficiency, but how many will be a great photographer?

Cheers,
Gary

 

[Roger Hicks]

"...because they can point the camera and press the button". Ah, but can they?

I often hear people inflating the importance of the technical side of things and down-playing the "Pointing and shooting" part. Anyone who has tried to make good pictures knows that the pointing is by far the hardest and most important part. Just about anyone can gain technical proficiency, but how many will be a great photographer?

Cheers,
Gary

Dear Gary,

Absolutely.And it's not just the pointing. It's also knowing WHEN to press the button.

Mind you, although I completely agree that just about anyone can gain technical proficiency, it's depressing how many don't bother.

Cheers,

R.

 

[gns]

Dear Gary,

Absolutely.And it's not just the pointing. It's also knowing WHEN to press the button.

Cheers,

R.

Yes, that too.
Another way I've heard this put is that the hard part isn't knowing HOW to make the picture, but knowing WHAT PICTURE to make.

Gary

 

[Sonnar2]

Not people like Cartier Bresson, then, or Ernst Haas, or Sebastiao Salgado, or Aleksandr Rodchenko or....

I assume HCB and some of the others used 35mm because LF is a bit inconvenient for street photography. Many of them already switched to digital or will do.
Other artists don't care about what's "convenient", simply looking for the best technical way to express their art. This rarely was, and is, 35mm film. ;-)

 

[Roger Hicks]

I assume HCB and some of the others used 35mm because LF is a bit inconvenient for street photography. Many of them already switched to digital or will do.
Other artists don't care about what's "convenient", simply looking for the best technical way to express their art. This rarely was, and is, 35mm film. ;-)

That's a large assumption and completely unfounded. There's a great deal more to art than technique.

Cheers,

R.

 

[peterm1]

I love using film cameras right up until I press the shutter. After that, I prefer digital 😉

Well put. I still get my film cameras out for special occasions but they are no longer really mainstream for me. And in a sense here is the reason - I simply cannot tell you how many times before digital came along that I just shot a few shots, shot a few shots, shot a few shots and then months later had no idea what type of film I had left in a camera, let alone what images were on the exposed film inside the body. Eventually I would shoot a few boring crap images of my cat or whatever just to get to the end of the roll to get it developed - and even then sometimes would just throw it in my drawer until eventually I got sick of it and still undeveloped chucked the exposed but undeveloped roll in the bin. Absent the cost film was fine for those times when I wanted to have a shooting blitz but for everyday use it was a bloody disaster.

Film can be great for occasional use but there is a reason digital is taking over - and its not because of a bunch of spray and pray amateurs who do not know any better - who do you think the camera companies sell all of their top of the range pro kit to. To the pros that's who and they would not be using digital if it were not better for them. Sorry, my little hobby horse there!

 

[Frontman]

I've got my "orphan" D300 sitting on my night table, it seems the only time I use it is when I want pics of items to sell on eBay, or to take pictures of my film cameras before I post them on the internet.

In these hi-tech times where I sit at a computer every day with my cell phone at hand and my MP3 player in my pocket. I watch movies on my HD television, and pass my commuting by playing games on a Sony PSP while wearing a wonderful new set of Bose QC-15 noise-canceling headphones. In this universe of electrical gadgets, I find the simplicity of film and the manual dexterity which film requires to be an escape from point-and-shoot here-you-are convenience.

There is something about that element of expectation I get when I'm developing film. I'm as careful as I can be when shooting film, but I never know exactly how the image will come out until I'm finished. It's a lot like my childhood Christmas mornings, though on a smaller scale.

I like the smooth turn of a good, manual focus lens, watching as the image comes into focus in the viewfinder, and the soft click as I press the shutter button.

I suppose the difference is a lot like walking or driving a car. Driving will get you to where you are going much more quickly, but walking gives you more of an appreciation of the distance, and an even greater appreciation of the destination once you finally reach it.

 

[Keith]

I like the smooth turn of a good, manual focus lens, watching as the image comes into focus in the viewfinder, and the soft click as I press the shutter button.

Soft click? 😱

My Hasselblad comes to mind here! 😛

 

[gavinlg]

Soft click? 😱

My Hasselblad comes to mind here! 😛

hehe.. If there ever was a polar opposite to a "soft click" of a shutter, it would probably be my pentax 6x7.


KA-CHUNK!!! (echos)

 

[italy74]

Hehehe, I too heard the mighty Pentax 67 firing the shutter button... It was definitely the louder shutter I had ever heard. Good second an old yashica SLR that had a friend of mine. The FM3a also isn't a spy camera hehehe

 

[NickTrop]

There seems to be an opinion held by some that if a thing is not difficult to do, the end result is not worthy, and that therefore, anything which automates or otherwise makes straight crooked paths is to be eschewed.

This gets to the heart of what Rolande Barthes had to say about the 'art' of photography when he spoke of the art of the photographer making the image. This is not about the resulting photograph as seen by a viewer, this is about the pleasure the photographer feels as they go about making the exposure in the camera. It is art of the first part.

What these folks are really saying is that they enjoy the process of using hard-won skills they have mastered, the once-difficult chores that they now find a pleasant and soothing ritual, and anything which detracts from that is repugnant to them.

I understand this. As a former smoker, I can tell you about the pleasure of ritual. No nicotine patch could give me what I craved, which was not the mere presence of nicotine in my body, but the delivery method and the ritual to which I had grown accustomed. I didn't just like the effects of nicotine, I liked to smoke, and those are two very different things that just happened to be tied to each other in one little paper tube.

Those who bemoan the automation that accompanies digital photography (although as others have said, the automation arrived before the digital sensor did) are really expressing their sense of loss over a pathway that they have grown accustomed to. The creekside trail they once wandered over, their feet knowing each gnarled root in their way and every fallen log to be clambered over, now hesitate upon finding that the trail has been paved and handrails put up.

It cannot be denied that most digital SLR cameras offer the same level of manual control that film SLR cameras do - more if you include newer manual choices such as ISO settings in-camera instead of by changing film. However, they are not the same ritual, not the same foot-path, and although the same skills once hard-mastered are still useful, not everyone who learned using film recognizes this at first.

Excellent post! Beautifully articulated.

In addition to the above...

Film SLRs are FULL FRAME. Full frame costs $$$ in up front equipment costs in digital. With film cameras, the upfront costs could be as low as a couple bucks - or free, is someone has a servicable camera in their closet they're willing to give away. You get a "new" full frame "digital" sensor with every frame. The costs are "pay as you go" for more individual full frame sensors (film frames) and processing and printing fees. Bill summed up everything much more articulately than I would have said about the "tactile pleasures" and "film craft" that goes along with it, so I'll stop it there.