How did you come back to film? Share your stories.

I briefly stepped into the digital world but have left it many years ago. The only digital camera I have is my phone.

I'm a photo guy not a gear head.
 
I'm tired of buying external hard drives because of disk failure. The cabinet that houses my slides and negatives has never crashed, never suffered a power surge, and never prevented access to a file during a power outage. Sadly, though, the search process for finding a particular image in the cabinet isn't much faster than the ones I conduct with a computer. Oh well, no system is perfect.
 
I've always been a film shooter, except for a very brief fling w/ a Nikon D70 SLR way back when. I liked the camera well enough when it came to shooting it, but the images out of it were not up to par compared to my film camera, especially w/ black and white. Portraits were the biggest downside, as the digital files were capable of making even attractive people look bad. The colour shots were not so hot either in terms of colour saturation. It didn't help that my daily film shooter was an M3 w/ a 50 DR and a 90 Tele Elmarit, because that kit set the IQ bar unnaturally high. That's the only reason I've stayed w/ film......image quality. I can usually spot a digital image a mile away, and I simply don't like what I see from any digital camera. Plus, you're largely stuck w/ the one look you get, while w/ film I have lots of choices for different looks.
 
Hey man! Just finished a roll of film in one of the Leicas, and working on another in the M2 (HP-5, excellent film). The MDa is loaded with Panatomic-X right now, and its being used with the micro-Visoflex for a woodworking project (woodworking tools as a photographic subject. I'm not using the visoflex as a hammer 🙂 )

Film continues to play a role in my adventure.....

As a side note, I wish there was a way to adequately scan my MF film without spending a fortune on a decent MF-capable scanner. My Epson V500 is just not "cutting the mustard"... Anyone figure out a configuration to scan MF (6x6 and 6x7) with a BEOON? I happen to have one, and it does work amazing for 35 film... Needs to be as quick and simple as the 35 shooting. I don't have the time or patience to stitch together parts of a negative. I'm looking for convenience as part of the process....I have a LOT of negatives.
 
The AE1

The AE1

I bought my first SLR in 1980. It was a Canon AE1. I was instantly hooked on photography and eventually became chief of photography for both junior high and high school. I had my own darkroom from the age of 13 until I moved away to college at 18. Somewhere around 1987 it was stolen. I eventually bought some better cameras, mostly Nikons, and eventually sold everything off for simpler autofocus cameras.

Then came digital. Once digital got to the point of producing great images, I abandoned film entirely. I had a 4 megapixel Panasonic LUMIX with a Leica lens that took phenomenal pictures. Then came camera phones, culminating in the latest and greatest iPhones.

One day I stopped at a garage sale, and there among the many treasures sat 2 Canon AE1 cameras with Canon lenses. Neitehr was working and I knew it was likely a battery issue. I haggled and got both for $20. I got some batteries and one was working perfectly. The other had the dreaded shutter squeal. I shot my first roll and it was fogged due to rotted seals, but what was salvageable on film produced those dreamy film images I had not seen in years. It just had that indescribable warmth that I had long forgotten. I fixed the light leaks and ordered a brick of Tri-X online.

Here I am a year later. I own a Mamiya 7ii and 5 lenses, a Bronica RF 645 and 3 lenses, 3 Rolleiflexes, a Leica, 2 Bessas, a slew of lenses, 5 Nikons, a freezer full of film, 2 bulk loaders, processing equipment, and a digital film scanner and 2 photo printers, plus a Fuji digital camera and slew of lenses. To say I am obsessed is an understatement. I try to love digital, but I just can’t. I love the imperfection of film and the process of creating a photograph that only film offers to me. I love the nostalgic beauty of occasional film fogging, or photos at the end of the roll that just barely make it before getting cut off. I love the lettitude of Black and white, and the drama of real grain, and the details rich highlights, and pure blacks. I love the organic vibrance of Fuji color slide film and pray for the return of Kodachrome. My Fuji digital camera takes amazing and sharp photographs, but they completely lack soul. Film is soulful. I hope more people rediscover it and keep it alive.
 
Started shooting film back in the very early 90's when i bought a Praktica BMS, progressed to shooting slides throughout the 90s and then bought a Canon EOS 5 which i still use.
In 2003 i bought a Nikon 8400 and switched to digital, Shot it for a couple of years, enjoyed it but my computer that i used to store all pictures went bust and lost all of them. I have a couple of backup cds that i cannot read them in any device.

In 2006 i found an old coronet deluxe box camera in a charity shop and started shooting film again. A year or so later, my brother in law moved to his new house and found and old Zenit 12XP in the garage - my mother in law saved it from been thrown away and gave it to me. From that point on i started shooting b&w film and got into developing and more recently into darkroom printing.
 
I briefly shot film growing up, but only ever dabbled in photography. I got my first digital camera (a Canon IXUS 5) and used it for everything for ages. I started to take more of an interest in photography and got a Nikon DSLR, and used it for many years. Then one day I was thinking about getting a new Nikon DSLR, I went to the local camera shop and tried one out (the D800 I believe) and it just felt like using a computer. I made that remark to the store owner who gave me a Leica M6 (or maybe M7) to try. I was sold, it offered a clear, dedicated view. I sold all my Nikon gear that week and bought a used M6. I fell in love with film later, the main drawcard for me was the simplicity of a manual mechanical camera.

One if the other things that I like (even if I don’t really admit it) is that digital has brought some of the previously unobtainable cameras of my youthful dreams into the realm of quite easily obtainable. Things like Hasselblads are relatively cheap, I could pick up a Nikon FM2 and a set of primes for a few hundred, and apart from lenses (but there are now 3rd party lenses) even Leicas are obtainable. That is a reason to shoot film in itself, you get to shoot the classics that you never dreamed you would.
 
Sill in it. Last Digital camera purchase - a Canon S90 and iPhone 6 😀

Been on a manual camera buying spree (a bit of gas) the past few years:
  • Kodak Retina Reflex III w/Schneider-Kreuznach Retina-Xenon 50mm f/1.9 - a $30 consignment -shop find
    • (sent from Boston to have CLA'd by Chris Sherlock in New Zealand @ Retina Rescue - came back beautiful!)
  • Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super B w/50mm f2.8 Zeiss Tessar
    • Zeiss Pro-Tessar 35mm f3.5
    • Zeiss Pro-Tessar 85mm f3.2
    • Zeiss Pro-Tessar 115mm f4
  • Zeiss-Ikon Contina-matic III w/Pantar 45mm f2.8
Both Zeiss's are in transit back to me this week from Radu Lesaru (3R Camera Service) after a full CLA on cameras/lenses.

Most recently:
  • Zeiss Contessa w/Zeiss Opton Tessar f2.8
  • Mamiya RB67 Pro-SD w/90mm K/L lens and motorized back
I must say, the filters, hoods, and accessories for the Zeiss cameras are exquisite examples of design and machining.

I'll post some pics in the future.
 
Yes, good thread idea Kostya, thank you. My re-entry into film is all my son's fault. I have "framed" him below. I shot film for a living in the 80's and 90's but sold all my gear in 1999 as I moved into IT work. Because of my son's interest in film, and a IIIf he gave me, I got back into it in 2012.
U51008I1465650109.SEQ.0.jpg

John Mc
 
"Coming back to film" definitely overstates it for this hobbyist in the sense that it's a move with zero impact beyond "Dad's pics take longer..." and by that time, nobody cares. So a move that began as a cheapster's justification for buying a film Leica as a way to possibly cut down gear when the magic day of adding a digital Leica might occur and I'd have only one set of lenses... simply led to a series of unexpected and in many cases "it'll never happen" events happening.

Digital finally worked after the fifth digital camera starting with a Pentax K-5 became a series of Fujis and finally a Sony A7RII. Sony solved the desire to use old Zeiss glass with image stabilization. But ultimately I found myself shooting digital B&W jpegs + RAW, and liked the B&W often better. Thinking I didn't want to spend the $'s on a Leica Monochrome, I went for an M4-2... again, the (uninformed) cheapster move. Added ZM lenses... 'cause yes, I a Zeiss man at heart.

That then led to developing my own film as a way to cut costs. Notice a consistent thread? Yep: Spend more money to spend less? Yep. (Fairly each trade out has a cost, too... so capital "burn" hasn't been inexpensive). So I bought that gear, and then had to figure how to digitize the negs... 'cause I ONLY have a digital printer and no place for a darkroom. By this time, I'd moved up to adding Medium Format... 'cause "they" made me do it. MF is cheaper than a Leica F/1.1 lens by a mile, right? Again, did it on the cheap: Bronica SQ-A... which was switched out to a Rolleiflex 6008... 'cause I'm a Zeiss man and an odd one. Oh... and I picked up a Jobo CPE2+ demo unit from Catlabs as along the way somewhere I'd begun trying to emphasize the consistency of the process... had artifacts I couldn't explain when using a Uniroller, and thought a full machine would solve those... and it did.

What I've found through the whole of this is that there was a world of skills I've had to tackle along the way. Most would never have been learned had I not ventured back into film, picked up a series of books on photography and the zone system, and done a world of things to try and acquire some technical competency. The challenge of learning has actually been the driving force. I believe this feeds back into photography generally no matter whether it's digital or analog, so there's no losses and only gains. But I've also found the truth is that there is no cheap way to go about it... at speed. And I've done the whole of this film journey in the past 12 months... so it has been at speed. And in retrospect, I could have bought the Monochrome probably more than once. The only difference is that I've done it in small bites that made it more palatable, and so I did it. That's scarcely a virtue and more a defect truth be told. The digital Leica still hasn't happened and probably won't until an M10 or a Monochrome comes way down in price... somewhere likely after my life's course has run no doubt, or at least whenever it might happen that I can't (or won't choose to) process my own negatives anymore.

Do I want to wet print? Not really. I like to print big with digital, and have a fairly significant footprint there with Capture One, Imageprint and an Epson P800, and can do very nice work with it. Reaching the same level of proficiency with wet printing would take years I probably don't have, and the prints I've seen on some of Mitsubishi's PictorioPro film are as sweet as any wet print I've ever seen. But to try it here and there? Sure. It might be fun for a day but not for life.

For me at this point, the skills I want to learn have more to do behind the camera with light, composition and tone control than with the gear or the printing process. The gear has been fun but also time consuming, and now I see the real challenge as making a great image with the worst possible (okay... maybe not worst, but at least the antithesis of the gear head's idea of the perfect camera) gear is now more and more appealing. So yes, I've picked up a MF Folder to have something with me that gives me no edge, no assistance, and plenty of ways to just blow the whole thing. And that absolutely rocks! I love it.

Thanks for forcing me to collect my thoughts and take some truth serum. I think in many ways we go backwards - back to film - in order to go forward. And I am thankful for all the help so many of you on this forum have offered in assisting my engagement... KoFe has been outstanding in this, but so have so many others in the thirst for knowledge. Paying it forward... seems the only way to go.
 
Ko.Fe. said:
How did you come back to film? Share your stories.
Click to expand...

Since I never left film, I could never come back to film.

For decades, I only shot and developed small, medium, and large format color and black&white film.

Today, I still shoot and develop small, medium, and large format black&white film plus I also shoot small format digital.

I no longer develop color slide film because it is too difficult to find E-6 chemistry.


Film Cameras by Narsuitus, on Flickr
 
I started with film around 1955 and I’m ending with film now.

In between I switched to digital. For a few years starting around 2004.

But I’m back. Currently spending time with my daughter and her family with only film cameras. Only black and white film. Brought my trusty 1936 Leica IIIa and exercising it.

Truth be known, I’ll make some digital photographs with my phone.

Link to E-6 chemistry:

https://www.freestylephoto.biz/11864-Arista-Rapid-E-6-Slide-Developing-Kit-1-Gallon
 
I came back to photography after many years away. I still had my film cameras, so I shot film. I took a basic black and white class at my local community college so that I would have access to a darkroom while I was setting my own back up. Later I got a digital camera. I shoot both film (35mm, 6x6, 4x5) and digital now, and mostly print in platinum/palladium.
 
ptpdprinter said:
I came back to photography after many years away. I still had my film cameras, so I shot film. I took a basic black and white class at my local community college so that I would have access to a darkroom while I was setting my own back up. Later I got a digital camera. I shoot both film (35mm, 6x6, 4x5) and digital now, and mostly print in platinum/palladium.
Click to expand...

My sincere respect:

Pt-Pd is my absolute reference for "a photograph". I have been in love with ptpd prints ever since I saw my first one in person (and you simply must experience them in person) at a museum somewhere in southern California -- it was a well-known photographer whose name I am forgetting. The print was simply two cigarette butts on a plain background. Kind of a still life macro thing. Anyway, if two cigarette butts could bring tears to my eyes, there must be something special about this platinum-palladium stuff.

I have since wanted to do my own ptpd printing. Went as far as using my 4x5 extensively when I was younger, anticipating the printing. I have done as much substitute ptpd printing as I could bear -- cyanotype! I've come to like cyanotype as a result, but all was in preparation for the real thing. Lately I purchased Pictorio film so I can make digital negatives, again with real printing in mind.

But, I have yet to make the plunge and finally get on with ptpd. I have to admit that $$$ is a major consideration. Looking at my learning curve with cyanotype, and the number of "failures" even today makes me hesitant. Its more than just brushing some stuff on any ol' paper, sticking a neg on it and thrusting out under the sun in the back yard 🙄
 
Bill Clark said:
...
Sorry Windows users.
Click to expand...

You don't have to be sorry.
Our youngest daughter plays Maincraft on iPad after Kindergarten and my mother saying "Hello, Google" to some non-Windows tablet device after working for fifty years.
Both are taking pictures with it.
While our eldest daughter paid for taking pictures with DSLR and edit hundreds of them on Windows based laptop within couple of hours.
And I have to bump up my IT knowledge with CompTa+, Network+, CCNA courses barely recognizing Macs as something which exist.
I use same Windows based computer to edit scans, compile some basic codes and goof around with network devices.
For each group its own. Sorry. 🙂
 
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