It is time for a poll

[shortstop]

I print all my work, B&W or color, with an ancient Epson R2400. The R2400 was the first consumer-grade printer with an inkset that could achieve the quality I want in my B&W work, and papers for digital printing, combined with the Epson K3 inkset, have advanced to the point where the results are superior to my eye than anything I was ever able to produce in a home darkroom. All of the work I've hung in galleries, exhibitions, and sold to clients has been produced on that printer, from October 2005 to the present day. (Yes, it's about time for a new printer, but the old R2400 is still working...) There are several choices in printers available nowadays that are up to the task, but I prefer to stick with the Epson K3 inkset that I know. B&W with a digital camera (except the Leica M Monochrom) is a rendering process: the camera captures a full spectrum image, you have to learn how to render it to B&W and output it to a printer in a satisfying way. It's very much the same as learning how to process film and print in the darkroom, only it happens on a computer with software rather than in a darkroom with chemical baths. Once you learn how to do it, and presuming a printer of suitable quality, high quality inkjet printing is a consistent and rational process. BTW, when people say "high ISO" these days, they typically mean ISO 6400, 12800, 25600, etc. ISO 1200/1600/3200 aren't even considered high ISO anymore, whereas with film "hi speed" is definitely ISO 400 and above. I have finally found a use for such stratospheric ISO settings: hand-held pinhole photography. 🙂 Sony A7 + Skink Pinhole Pro (Zone Sieve disk, 24mm focal length) ISO 25600 @ f/71 @ 1/60 second G

Wow, I like your pinhole shot at 1/60. The grainy effect is dreamy.

 

[Godfrey]

Wow, I like your pinhole shot at 1/60. The grainy effect is dreamy.

Thank you!

A coworker saw it on my iPad mini and demanded a print, so I've made both 11x17 and US Letter size prints of it now. I think this pinhole series of the park were I walk on Saturday mornings is going to be a photo book soon. 🙂

G

 

[Anthony Harvey]

I use digital for colour and film for B&W so my use entirely depends on whether in any given situation I want to take colour or B&W - and this varies with the circumstances. For the last two months I've been using film exclusively cos I'm eager to get the very best from my great interest at the moment - using 40mm SLR lenses (Pentax M 40/2.8 in ME Super and Zuiko 40/2 in OM4-Ti). But then I realised that I haven't taken colour shots of my two two-year old grandchildren in all that time (and at that age they change so very quickly) so it's back to colour!

 

[raid]

It is Friday today, and very soon we will have the weekend to enjoy. Whether it is sleeping late, or staying up late, or whether it is going out to enjoy nature, what are your plans for the weekend? Will they include photography?

I may pick a lens that I have not used in ages. This is will be fun.

 

[Gareth Rees]

Load my old Ikoflex with Tri X and go out and have some fun.
Not used the old camera for a very long time.

 

[chnops]

I have schizophrenic relation to film and digital it seems I go through rapid and unplanned bouts of digital shooting OR film shooting. I keep a small cache of Color and B+W film to use in a Contax T3 for film, or combine manual lenses with a Sony mirrorless to have a fairly unobtrusive shooting experience. Film on the heavier end of the see-saw this week.

 

[shadowfox]

One road trip, 400 digital photos, 48 film frames.
My personal favorites are from the two rolls.

I love film.

 

[davidphillip]

I use film for serious work (mostly 8x10 B&W), plus Rollei 6x6, Mamiya 7, Leica 35mm. Digital for snaps of granddaughter. If I did more colour, I'd use more digital...

 

[lukitas]

What Godfrey says is absolutely right. Film eats money.

I'd love to shoot digital. But I hate DSLRs. It started with the Nikon F4. It was as great as it was wrong. Since then, camera design has gone bonkers. At one end, we've got the great big boxing-glove-toad, warts all over the back, top and sides, with a humongous black tube extending out front. Menus layered as deep as the grand canyon, and myriads of 'automatic' settings. At the other end, the pack of cigarettes with a motorised pop-up lens, all the menus but no options.

I admit, the only digital camera I want is a full-frame Leica. Preferably a Monochrom. I have hot dreams of a drop-in digital cassette for the M3. Battery container in the take-up spool chamber, processor and card-slot in the film cassette, sensor on a thin film between both. And the rewind lever should charge the battery. But in the mean time, I'm spending most of my ready lolly on film and processing.

 

[J. Borger]

100% Film here. Only MF and LF. No 35mm anymore.
I prefer the workflow and the endresult. Could not go back to digital and would not like to.
The fact you can not see what you have shot is liberating. No clients looking over your what,s on the screen. With a rolleiflex or Hasselblad i find it also very easy to interact with people. They are curious about it and hapily volunteer in my projekts.
it also amazes me how many young people realy like traditional B&W photography and choose a wetprint over an inkjet if i give them a choice. They make all the quickies with their digital cameras and iphones themselves and see filmphotography as something special. I have to ad I mostly work with people in age 15-25 who are barely familiar with filmphotography but they seem to value its merits very much.

 

[raid]

We are now at 300 votes. This is what the poll says:

I use digital cameras more often than film cameras.................... 117.....39.00%
I use equally often digital and film cameras................................ 32......10.67%
I use film cameras more often than digital cameras.................... 151.....50.33%
Voters: 300. You have already voted on this poll