Kodak: Most photographers prefer film

[photogdave]

Statisically, the sample size is valid. You do not have to survey every photographer to have accurate results.

What if 3000 different photographers said they would never touch film again? Would the headline be "Most Photographers Prefer Digital", ignoring the first survey, or would you combine the two and say "Photographers Split Fifty-Fifty On Digital and Film"?

 

[GoodPhotos]

I feed and house my family primarily with my wedding work so I suppose I should chime in my 2 pence. To be blunt about it, I cannot imagine going back to shooting film for income photography. I shot with film for the first 17 years of my career and I went fully digital in late 2002 with a steep learning curve, but absolutely no regrets.

I'm surprised that so many of you assumed that wedding & portrait shooters are still using film. I don't know ANY full time wedding professionals in my market who are still shooting film exclusively. Most of those who are still holding on to even some vestiges of professional film use do so because they still aren't 100% up on their workflow and so they don't trust digital capture. They complain it is a different look from what they are used to with film, because they haven't learned yet how to achieve the look that they want from their digital images.

There are a few part time shooters who are still shooting film only. While they have a good eye and their labs help them turn out passable quality, they in turn relinquish all control over their own images after they push the shutter. These folks are also mostly shooting 3 hour weddings for the sub $1k market just for extra spending money so that control isn't as crucial to them. To each their own, but they are a VERY small portion of the market here in Northern New England.

My 'digital prints' are printed right along side their 'film prints' on the same Fuji Frontier but my multiple sets of 'negatives' are backed up on removable HD and Gold CDR and Gold DVD media in dark/dry storage on my end and Gold CDR/DVD on their end (with an admonition to my clients to make copies every other year or so to keep up with evolving storage tech.) I don't ever get a 'scratched roll' from a wedding any more. Never have a roll lost in shipping. (If a CD/DVD gets lost, I simply burn another one.) Longevity and safety of my iamges is simply not a problem due to redundancy that I cannot have with film. For even greater longevity of fine art B&W prints, pigment inks or Carbon on Cotton prints properly printed and presented, will equal Silver Fiber Prints or traditional Silver/Platinum/Palladium prints can be made from a good digital file with relative ease at a good lab. (such as Photographic Traditions of Maine.)

I upload best quality files within a week of making them and have invited all 250 guests to click through my site to view and order prints and enlargements. I set my prices through (http://www.DigiProofs.com) and the lab handles the money, the order fulfillment and sends me a check once a month. In many casees these no hassle resales match my initial shooting fee from the weddings and also lead to future bookings from further exposure to my work. While I COULD have film scanned and acheive similar results, the scanned files would be much larger to store and upload and would be far more costly to just acheive something close to the quality that is native to my 10MP DSLR.

No ,I don't think film sucks. I rather enjoy my Lieca IIIf and my Rolleiflex MXEVS (and Ikon, Vito III and Retinette) BUT for income, I can no longer justify film as my media of choice.

 

[40oz]

"While I COULD have film scanned and acheive similar results, the scanned files would be much larger to store and upload and would be far more costly to just acheive something close to the quality that is native to my 10MP DSLR."

That doesn't make any sense. You scan the film and present it at whatever resolution you wish. Are you currently offering 100% captures to your online customers? Are you suggesting you will never use a camera with a higher resoution than 10MP because the files would be too large to store and upload, be far more costly, and deliver no benefit to the consumer?

I can understand your preference for digital capture, but alot of it seems to center around your desire to work the way you do. I don't think it is fair to characterize anyone who has a different workflow preference as "aren't 100% up on their workflow and so they don't trust digital capture." I'd say their complaints that digital capture doesn't look like they want has more to do with them not finding any value in spending time learning "how to achieve the look that they want from their digital images."

Why would a person spend time altering every single digital image to achieve a look they currently get without any addition time investment? They shoot the film, they have it processed and printed, Voila! they get the look they want. You are suggesting they shoot the images, process it themselves and make any necessary adjustments to the images to get the "film look," then send it out for prints anyway. Seems to me the guys shooting film "for the look" have a workflow that reduces the time spent working on a client's images.

One could easily say people like you either prefer the look of digital or haven't figured out how to get the look you prefer with film. Or, that people who shoot digital tend to spend more time fiddling with the images simply because they enjoy that control, despite the fact that it increases the amount of time spent on each job.

I don't think there is anything wrong with your preference, and thank you for sharing your insight and details of your workflow.

 

[Trius]

Colyn: I wasn't referring to you directly regarding "punishing" Kodak. And I agree that Kodak has been, for years, less than clear on their direction and plans. OTOH, I'm just trying to stick to the facts, ma'am. 😉

 

[john_van_v]

I have been going to exhibits of old school photojournalist work, and then I suddenly found negatives from my shooting as a teenager in NYC which I scanned.

There is NO question that you cannot get the results that we got back when (or still get if we have a lab available) with digital.

Digital gives really crisp color photos on a fine day. But digital has produced poor and inconsistant shots for me under overcast skys, as did color film. And when I convert color to B&W it fails to hold up against a real B&W.

Then there is the issue of shutter lag, which I feel is actually a misnomer-- I say shutter action. I really do not think I will get the synchronicity that I got with my Olympus OM-1 with any digital camera-- or any electronic shutter.

So much so that I just eprayed for another OM-1 -- and got a good one !!

I will be shooting bw400cn for the near future until I can get a lab going again.

Below are some examples from my youth: tri-x, D76. I printed on polycontrast, but I will have to dig deeper to find those.

​

 

[Mario Mazariegos]

John...

John...

You sure seem like a candidate for a leica!!! Keep it up!

 

[jlw]

In looking at the photos above...

...I am not saying this to be a troublemaker (and I'll back that up in a moment) but I'd say they illustrate many of the problems of the film-to-scanner workflow. Their highlights are blown out, their blacks are plugged, and they're covered with dust spots and hairs.

Every one of them would have been a better image, technically, if it had been either shot on film and printed via conventional wet process or captured and presented digitally. The film-to-scanner workflow (or worse yet, the film-to-scanner-to-printer workflow) just combines the disadvantages of both realms with few of the advantages.

Okay, now why I am not saying this to be a troublemaker: the reason I'm saying it is that I tried to walk down that path myself. I bought a good film scanner and told myself that I was going to keep right on shooting film and moving it into the digital realm.

I was bitterly disappointed to find that for someone with my quality expectations and degree of time and commitment available, it just did not work. The images I'd view or print from scanned negatives were never as good as the same negatives printed in a darkroom, and once I got a decent digital camera, they also were never as good as images captured digitally from the start.

And aside from the quality issue, there was the time involvement: I found by actual head-to-head comparisons that getting a good scan out of a negative (admittedly with a slow scanner) took almost exactly the same amount of time as getting a good print out of that same negative, and that was before I factored in the huge amount of time required to retouch dust spots and emulsion defects off every scan (film scanners being much less forgiving of this than my diffusion-head enlarger.)

I was forced to conclude that the hybrid workflow took more time and produced poorer results than either an all-analog or an all-digital workflow. I wish that weren't true, but for me it is. Maybe if you're tolerant of dust and a short tonal range you can make it work, but if you want to shoot film I still maintain that you're better off investing your time on enlarging than on scanning, and if you want to produce digital images I maintain that you'll get better-quality files much more easily by capturing them with a digital camera in the first place.

As I said, I've been down this path, and it made me very, very sad that the path led nowhere.

 

[GoodPhotos]

For me going Digital was as much about having total control of my work again as anything else. I spend a whole lot more time investment in my digital work now than I did the many many years that I was shooting wedings on film, but that time pays off in giving me exactly the end product that I (and my clients) want.

I don't know very many Wedding/Portrait shooters who souped and printed their own work. Most of us relied on trying to maintain a good relationship with our pro lab and hoping that they'd produce something from our negs close to what we had in mind when we pressed the shutter. Often, we had to make due with what we got back and on the LAB's schedule or fight for something better. I don't want to have to fight to get the results I want.

Now, all of that control is in my hand. While I use a lab to print my end products, they print them as I've profiled them for the machines that they are printed on.

IF I had the time and money to soup and print 300 images per event by hand in a darkroom, I may have shot film for a few more years. As it was, a purely digital workflow has rejuvinated my business (and my excitedment for my work.)

It is certainly not the ONLY way, but it is the way that works best for me and it has been accepted as preferrable by many many others making some wonderful (and admittedly some crappy) photos today.

 

[john_van_v]

In looking at the photos above...

if you're tolerant of dust and a short tonal range you can make it work, but if you want to shoot film I still maintain that you're better off investing your time on enlarging than on scanning, and if you want to produce digital images I maintain that you'll get better-quality files much more easily by capturing them with a digital camera in the first place.

As I said, I've been down this path, and it made me very, very sad that the path led nowhere.

I agree with you 100%. The negatives were exciting to find, sort of personal archeology. I did not have resources back then; I designed boats then too, on whatever scrap paper was handy. I managed to find them too, and I scanned theman put them online.

My old OM-1 offered one thing that I have no experienced anywhere else-- really good shutter action. I was really able to synchronize with the scenes every time; I was never off. I want to get that back; it is non-existant in digital.

I think that the one feature that all photographers attibute to old school film photography and lab printing is warmth.

Here is one other picture that I scanned from a proof sheet; I could not find the negative. I think it shows the dreamy possibilties that film offers, which directly contradict the hyper reality of digital, my present medium.

This was taken in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, where I did all my learning. Kandinsky is to the right 🙂

 

[flatlander]

Most of you may be missing the point. A lot of "pro" work requires view camera cameras (for both the large image and perspective controls). There are also a lot of things you can do with film that just aren't practicle with digital. Don't believe me... just looks through the pages of any major magazine. About half of the photos are still being shot with film. Can't tell which ones... well, you're still new to digital. They do stand out. I'm not say one is better than the other. They are different tools that provide different end results. The other thing that bothers me... there were a few comments that digital was less expensive and clients/customers don't pay for film and processing anymore. Really... glad I don't work for them. Any shooter not charging some sort of digital capture charge needs to re-evaluate their buisness practices. Having said all that; I will say that 90% of my work is digital. Mostly because the clients request that I shoot digital.

 

[iml]

...I am not saying this to be a troublemaker (and I'll back that up in a moment) but I'd say they illustrate many of the problems of the film-to-scanner workflow. Their highlights are blown out, their blacks are plugged, and they're covered with dust spots and hairs.

Dust can be a problem (I'm lucky enough to live in a very dust free environment, and hardly ever have to do more than clone out a couple of spots), but highlights and shadow detail don't have to be compromised by scanning, surely, as one look at many RFF members' scans demonstrates.

I can understand why some people prefer a fully digital workflow, but there's no doubt that prints from film scans can be excellent. But, like good wet printing, it takes a bit of work, it isn't necessarily an easier option as far as effort goes.

IMO, my b&w (which is most of what I do), got far better when I reverted to film and started scanning, rather than converting digital images to b&w. The prints generally look far better, and even on-screen jpgs seem to have far richer tonality.

Ian

 

[varjag]

What if 3000 different photographers said they would never touch film again? Would the headline be "Most Photographers Prefer Digital", ignoring the first survey, or would you combine the two and say "Photographers Split Fifty-Fifty On Digital and Film"?

If the sample polled was representative, it will give statistically correct results that can be extrapolated to the whole. Explaining statistics in a forum post would take too much effort, but there are some introductory guides on the Net, e.g. Wikipedia piece on opinion polls. Check out specifically the passage on Gallup vs. Literary Digest predictions and the section on sampling error.

 

[Finder]

What if 3000 different photographers said they would never touch film again? Would the headline be "Most Photographers Prefer Digital", ignoring the first survey, or would you combine the two and say "Photographers Split Fifty-Fifty On Digital and Film"?

Are you saying that Kodak first screened the photographers to find their answers and then only surveyed the group that would support a predetermined result? This was a random sampling in a specific goup (professional photographers) and the sample size is great enough to show valid results. The idea that a different random sampling of the same group would show anything statistically different is not likely. It seems from your post you simply don't like what the survey is implying, but that does not make the survey any less accurate or valid.

 

[photogdave]

It seems from your post you simply don't like what the survey is implying, but that does not make the survey any less accurate or valid.

You got me all wrong! In fact after shooting my last wedding digitally, I vowed to shoot the next one on film. The digital images looked great but the workflow killed me!
I'm just saying what if the poll randomly surveyed a DIFFERENT group? Maybe in a different part of the world. What would the headline be then? I just found the original article to be a bit general.
Sheesh!

 

[Socke]

Flatlander, we have a very big Studio here who just scrapped their E6 processor.

They still have some Plaubels and Linhofs, but they use them with the same digital backs they use on their Hassies.

 

[Finder]

You got me all wrong! In fact after shooting my last wedding digitally, I vowed to shoot the next one on film. The digital images looked great but the workflow killed me!
I'm just saying what if the poll randomly surveyed a DIFFERENT group? Maybe in a different part of the world. What would the headline be then? I just found the original article to be a bit general.
Sheesh!

But the article was clear about who was surveyed. Sure, poll professionals in China or New York City and the results could be different. Who says they wouldn't, but that does not make the survey meaningless.

Sheesh!

 

[shadowfox]

You sure seem like a candidate for a leica!!! Keep it up!

Why the need for a Leica? he has the good eyes for composition and an OM-1. 😀

 

[Trius]

Shadow, you are truly an OM-vangelist. 😀 And yes, he has a great eye.

But as much as I love my OMs and Oly RFs ... and as much as I have not yet truly exercised the glass ...

the other day I was going through some old 35mm chromes, ca. 1985-87. At first I thought they were OM shots because the shots brought back the memory of that day. But as I searched my memory, I couldn't honestly say that I recall holding the OM in my hands and making the exposures. The more I looked at the slides, the more I became convinced that they were M3/SA 21/3.4 shots. There was just something about the texture and 3D depth of the photos.

Would the Zuiko 21/2 be as good? Well, I honestly don't know. If I could go back nearly 20 years and shoot that scene again with both, I would be eternally grateful to the Great Spirit for giving me such an opportunity. And now, I no longer have the M3/SA kit to take with me on summer holidays this year to do a (somewhat) controlled test. (But I do have the Leitz/Brooks finder for the 21 SA ... go figure!)

So perhaps in some instances I can really say that Leica (or Zeiss) glass is "better" for me. And in some instances I don't think Leica or Zeiss glass is materially better than certain Zuiko (or Nikor, or Canon, etc., etc.) glass.

I agree that the OM-1 has wonderful shutter action and that it seldom was a factor in my not getting a shot. (I say seldom because there are shots I missed because of me, not the camera, but at the time it seemed that the "lag" was the culprit. I dunno.) But I can't recall missing a shot/timing when using the SP, RC, XA or LC due to shutter action.

 

[GoodPhotos]

"While I COULD have film scanned and acheive similar results, the scanned files would be much larger to store and upload and would be far more costly to just acheive something close to the quality that is native to my 10MP DSLR."

That doesn't make any sense. You scan the film and present it at whatever resolution you wish. Are you currently offering 100% captures to your online customers? Are you suggesting you will never use a camera with a higher resoution than 10MP because the files would be too large to store and upload, be far more costly, and deliver no benefit to the consumer?

I am sorry. I did not mean to imply that which you inferred. What I meant was that it would cost me FAR more to get high end very large scans made of my film (which would be needed if I want to match the native 10MP files of my D200.) All reputable labs that I have dealt with charge a premium per image for a high end scan of quality. I simply do not have time to scan my own work with my workload.

And yes, along with professionally printed first prints (in quadtone and colour), I do provide full resolution 10MP JPEGs to my clients and a license for them to use them as they wish for their own personal use.

I don't think it is fair to characterize anyone who has a different workflow preference as "aren't 100% up on their workflow and so they don't trust digital capture." I'd say their complaints that digital capture doesn't look like they want has more to do with them not finding any value in spending time learning "how to achieve the look that they want from their digital images."

No. That wouldn't have been fair. I'm not 9and was not) speaking about anyone but those wedding photographer whom I personally know are still shooting film and who've told me that they don't want to go digital, mostly because they are convinced that "digital prints don't look like film prints do." I'm pointing out only that that need not be true with some attempt at the learning curve. I have prints from both film and digital cameras in my portfolio from the last almost 23 years of shooting for dollars and none of the folks who make this claim can tell me 100% which print is from which camera.

Why would a person spend time altering every single digital image to achieve a look they currently get without any addition time investment? They shoot the film, they have it processed and printed, Voila! they get the look they want. You are suggesting they shoot the images, process it themselves and make any necessary adjustments to the images to get the "film look," then send it out for prints anyway. Seems to me the guys shooting film "for the look" have a workflow that reduces the time spent working on a client's images.

I don't mean to be leaving the impression that I have any complaint about the way others proceed with their workflow. I've only expressed the reasons that I shoot digitally now having shot the first almost two decades of my career with film. I don't believe that there is a 'dgital look' there are good photos and there are not so good photos. If you learn the complete craft of photography (from composition to end print) you can create any look that you want with either film or digital. I personally find that I have more control to this end using digital. That's all.

I likely sound like I'm evangelising because alomst daily still I hear claims to the extent of "If you really care about getting the best image for your client possible, you will shoot your work on film because digital just isn't there yet." (I'm not suggesting that you are saying this 40oz. only that the 'debate' often ends up there.) Again, for ME, and for most wedding/portrait shooters I know, Digital is not a 'good enough' medium for our work, it is rather a medium that can equal the quality of film in every instance for wedding and portrait photographers (and photojournalists) and it offers us several other advantages for the way that we want to work and have control over our work.

One could easily say people like you either prefer the look of digital or haven't figured out how to get the look you prefer with film. Or, that people who shoot digital tend to spend more time fiddling with the images simply because they enjoy that control, despite the fact that it increases the amount of time spent on each job.

I don't think there is anything wrong with your preference, and thank you for sharing your insight and details of your workflow.

Well, thank you and you are welcome.
🙂

 

[shadowfox]

Shadow, you are truly an OM-vangelist. 😀 And yes, he has a great eye.

I learn from the master 😉

But as much as I love my OMs and Oly RFs ... and as much as I have not yet truly exercised the glass ...

the other day I was going through some old 35mm chromes, ca. 1985-87. At first I thought they were OM shots because the shots brought back the memory of that day. But as I searched my memory, I couldn't honestly say that I recall holding the OM in my hands and making the exposures. The more I looked at the slides, the more I became convinced that they were M3/SA 21/3.4 shots. There was just something about the texture and 3D depth of the photos.

... a very honest master 😀

So perhaps in some instances I can really say that Leica (or Zeiss) glass is "better" for me. And in some instances I don't think Leica or Zeiss glass is materially better than certain Zuiko (or Nikor, or Canon, etc., etc.) glass.

I agree... there is a reason why Zeiss and Leitz rule the roost for such a long timespan. I remember recently holding a print from the Kiev with Jupiter 8, *a Russian copy* of the Sonnar, and I have to admit that it blows me in a way that not even the zuiko 85/2 has ever did. Somehow the timeless quality that I've been looking for is there.

Still, that doesn't take away my loving anything Zuiko. For the price that they are in today, it's a DARN STEAL.