Film Cameras = More Fun, More New Friends than DIGITAL?

kingqueenknave said:
True, but the attention is immediately lost once they see the screen embedded in the back of those bodies. Then they roll their eyes in disinterest, if not disgust, and state, "I'm not your friend anymore."
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Haha, that only happens 50% of the time. Usually the old men get disappointed. The younger people are still open to digital even if they prefer film (well, unless they are toy camera users).
 
I'm at the beach in Connecticut at sunset and I'm just composing and focusing on three little kids climbing on the lifeguard chair with the keep off sign on it when I notice out the corner of my eye a woman jump of the picnic table she is sitting at and start running toward me and shouts "Is that a Rolleiflex" with great excitement. She comes over and asks if she can look through the viewfinder, then proceeded to tell me her father had one and remembers being in the darkroom when he was printing.
The next day I'm in town and taking some night shots and a guy comes out from a bar and hollers across the street "Is that a Rolleiflex" and comes over for a friendly chat. Ten minutes later a guy stops and says, you guessed it "Is that a Rolleiflex" and asks if he can take a photo of it with his iPhone.
 
Got a special tour this holiday because of running around with a Mamiya 645 ProTL. Guy supervising the lot was interested, we got talking and he opened a few doors where the digital users couldn't come 😀
 
I was in the local library, with my Yaahcamat hanging off my shoulder in its everready case, when a woman asked me, "Is that a Film camera?"

I repled, "Yes."

"Is it a Brownie", she asked?

"No it is a Yashicamat, would you like to see it?"

and so on....

Funny thing this is a small town, I occasionally get looks when I am out shooting, but seldom conversations. "Nice camera", as they pass by sometimes. But then this is a University town and a tourist town, so cameras are not unusual.

Strange isn't it? ten years ago digital cameras were unusual, today film cameras are very strange to most people.
 
I had my IIIf and xpro1 at a Canada day function. Did most of my shooting with the Fuji because (I'm cheap) and the IQ is soooo good. I must of had 4 people come up and ask multiple questions on the Leica. Very few on the Fuji. I think the Fuji scared them off a bit. I feel I am so lucky to be able to have these two gems!
 
Ive had 5D's M9's and its so boring. Everytime I go back to film its much more fun. Something I can touch, thats real and takes me away from the disposable world we currently live in. Fast, cheap, easy, why bother?
 
These guys were all part of the same French family. When they saw me with my Leica M5 they came over for a chat. They were really interested in the Leica and we spent quite a while chewing the fat about things photographic. I'm pretty certain they wouldn't have bothered if I'd been shooting with a digital SLR.


Photographers Eilean Donan by Elmer Duck, on Flickr
 
... Eilean Donan's spiral staircases go the wrong way round, I assume whoever built it was left handed ... odd what bits of information one remembers it must be thirty five years since I was there last ... it's still raining I see
 
Although we travel up and down to Skye a lot, I've yet to find Eilean Donan in good light. It usually is as you see it in the photo above - grey and horrible! When there are so many fantastic photos of the castle out there it seems pointless to stop for a photo in anything but exceptional light. The only reason I stopped on this occasion was because there was an art exhibition in the nearby village hall.
 
i noticed girls dun mind having their photos taken by strangers with a rolleiflex....

semrich said:
I'm at the beach in Connecticut at sunset and I'm just composing and focusing on three little kids climbing on the lifeguard chair with the keep off sign on it when I notice out the corner of my eye a woman jump of the picnic table she is sitting at and start running toward me and shouts "Is that a Rolleiflex" with great excitement. She comes over and asks if she can look through the viewfinder, then proceeded to tell me her father had one and remembers being in the darkroom when he was printing.
The next day I'm in town and taking some night shots and a guy comes out from a bar and hollers across the street "Is that a Rolleiflex" and comes over for a friendly chat. Ten minutes later a guy stops and says, you guessed it "Is that a Rolleiflex" and asks if he can take a photo of it with his iPhone.
Click to expand...
 
jsrockit said:
Wouldn't a camera in full automatic mode allow you to focus on seeing better since you no longer need to worry about exposure and focus?
Click to expand...

Been thinking about this recently, and think the answer (for me) is no. Even when a full bells & whistle camera like a dslr is 'dumbed down' so to speak, I never feel I can trust it implicitly enough, to just let go and concentrate on seeing and shooting like I do with my M3. I think this is the key difference, after reading some left brain/ right brain art and photography writings recently. With my M3, I am able to fully immerse myself in my right brain and just focus on image making, whereas a camera with other distractions (even if just checking the camera made the right call), never permits me the same immersion.

On a practical level, I think two of the key points for me are exposure and focus. With an unmetered camera like an M and negative film, I am adjusting exposure for general shooting conditions almost unconsciously, and almost never when I have the camera at my eye. This means I only have to focus when I have the camera to my eye. That brings me to focussing, where I increasingly find autofocus makes me unconsciously zone out a little, where with manual focus, it keeps me right in the scene I am trying to capture, making me pay attention and cast my eye over the many elements in the scene before me.

At least the above are my thoughts on something I find quite natural, and not so easy to explain. For me, I simply 'see' better with my M3. This is not to say I cannot learn to 'see' in a similar way with other cameras, but think different cameras/ processes affect how we engage our perceptive abilities when we shoot. Learning how to engage that ability in other ways is something I am exploring a little at the moment, mainly in conjunction with Betty Edwards classic drawing manual Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and Bert Krages who uses a similar bent, but in relation to photography, in his Photography, The Art of Composition.
 
sailor said:
Although we travel up and down to Skye a lot, I've yet to find Eilean Donan in good light. It usually is as you see it in the photo above - grey and horrible! When there are so many fantastic photos of the castle out there it seems pointless to stop for a photo in anything but exceptional light. The only reason I stopped on this occasion was because there was an art exhibition in the nearby village hall.
Click to expand...

I have a nice slide of it somewhere, from the other side of the loch on the Lochalsh road. Early morning just off the first ferry blue sky and a few wispy low clouds over the hills, it lasted for an hour or so then the mist and rain blew in.
 
I used to come to a theater and photographing is prohibited in there, theater worker stopped a lady taking picture with a digital cam, but the interesting thing is nobody interfered me shooting with my silent M6 as I am invisible there.
 
As for more fun I definitely agree. I've been an avid user of film cameras since I started and I've always enjoyed it more than digital. It's so exciting getting your photos back!

As to meeting more people, I always think that's the case, but it doesn't happen to me as much as I always think it will. I live and shoot in Japan so maybe it's a language barrier thing. The people I find normally asking me about my cameras are those I meet through other people. Not so much random people on the street. Does anyone else have similar experiences?
 
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