Learning on film

[tunalegs]

I think people who didn't learn on film aren't going to understand why it is so valuable to learn with film, even if you end up shooting digital.

 

[shimokita]

in the mid 60s I learned how to do color separations on a Hell Klischograph K 181 (1,100 kg). We substituted a coated plastic for the zinc plates. In our case the four resulting scans (CMY + Black) were contact transferred to film for the offset printing process. To evaluate the scan we created an overlaid four [Kodak made] colored test films...

The 'processor' for the K 181 was a vacuum tube filled cabinet (250 kg) with knobs and dials...

In comparison, using a modern day film scanner is a snap... not to talk about time savings ; )

 

[Contarama]

I recently walked into one of our local brick and mortar camera stores/photography school. To get myself more involved on a few different levels I took Digital 1. The other course offering that piqued my interest was b&w film, processing, and printing. Digital one is all about exposure and the triangle. Digital two is the class for the very serious person. B&W Film 1 is for those that feel film is "magic". 20 people in digital one of which maybe three including myself had everything down pat from the start. Film one? 4 people total all with experience to some degree farther along than the triangle. The last session of digital one we were asked to make a story board from a list of about 30 things printed and pasted and presented to the class. I did ten digital prints and ten film prints. Not one person in that class could tell the difference. I encouraged the entire class to get a 35mm film camera to go along with their digital unit because they had now learned how to operate one. It will be interesting to see how many folks are in the next Film 1 class...I bet more than four! 🙂

The bulk of that store's printing chores are...film. Everyone who works there are film fanatics as are the majority of customers. All who work there have and shoot most jobs with digital cameras. In general folks who are all about photography no matter the camera or format. It is a wonderful store. Tulsa is very lucky to have the place. The woman who owns the place was/is a wedding photographer. Her husband who helps teach classes is a high school photography teacher.

 

[airfrogusmc]

Best Freudian misspelling ever!

Dye transfer just about killed me!!

LoL yeah it's been dead for quite a few years now.

 

[Bob Michaels]

Intriguing. No offence, please, but I must ask: where on this planet does a high school have «no computers available», but the high school kids have digital cameras?

Cuba. No computers for student use in any school. But many students have digital cameras (smart phone is the standard camera there) Interesting because there is no such thing as post processing for them. You either get it right or you are out of luck.

There are a number of very good photographers in Cuba. While they do use real cameras, no one has any concern or interest talking about boken, full frame vs. crop sensors, "good" lenses vs "bad" lenses, the fact that a digital camera is several years old, or any of the technical details that are the subject of many discussions here. But they do understand all aspects of light and all of those non technical things that really are the difference between a great photo and one that this simply technically perfect.

I know a professional photographer who uses an old digital compact P&S, does absolutely no post processing, and simply tells the lab which files to print. But you look at his marketing portfolio and see just really great photos.