Money Aside: M9 or M-X & Best Scanner

Money Aside: M9 or M-X & Best Scanner

  • Total voters
    500
bene said:
M9! Photography is a daily thing for me so digital makes sense. I can review faster and learn from mistakes faster. Of course I'll still keep my M7!
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I'm gonna do something like this one day too. I'll wait for 5 years or so, however, until Cosina finally takes over Leica and brings out the second iteration of the iiip (looks exactly like the iiif) and I can finally buy a mint M9 from a thrift store for $50.00. Then I'll have arrived.
 
Tom Diaz said:
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Listen up world: What photographers need is a simple service. Namely, you take your roll(s) of B&W film somewhere, it gets developed, it gets scanned, and a CD is made of the moderate-res scans. Like you can get for C-41 film at any drugstore...

TD
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You can do this now with B&W C41 film like XP2. It works very well...

Ernst
 
filmfan said:
I hope you don't really mean this, for the differences are dramatic.
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In what way do you feel the differences between scanned film and original digital files from camera are dramatic?

I am very interested by your comment and it has made me reflect on the two different approaches.

Ernst
 
ernstk said:
You can do this now with B&W C41 film like XP2. It works very well...

Ernst
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Yes it does. That's what I usually do when I want to shoot B&W. However, it would be more fun if I could shoot different films from time to time. For a variety of C-41 film experiences I guess I could just shoot different color films and convert the scanned images to black and white... but does anything else really look like Tri-X?

Tom
 
Tom Diaz said:
... but does anything else really look like Tri-X?

Tom
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To be honest Tom, and I'm a bit embarrassed to say this, I've only ever used Tri-X a couple of times. I grew up in the 70's as very much an Ilford boy, using FP4 and developing it in ID11. I never felt the need to use anything else.

I must try it some time...

Ernst
 
Tom A said:
I voted for the M/Scanner set up. I have it already so that simplified it too.
My negative files go back 40+ years and it only takes me minutes to pull out a negative, scan it and, if needed, do some spotting and contrast correction.
Digital is still very much an unknown when it comes to storage and longevity. Yes, you can "re-format" every 3-5 years - but how many of us would truly do that. Hard drives,CD's and DVD's have a limited lifespan - bl/w film properly processed will last a long, long time without any reformat procedure.
I also find that I am more selective when it comes to edits and shooting with film. With digital one tends to "scatter shoot" in the hope that something will be good!
There is also, at least as far as I am concerned, the added technology and its inherent problems. A M2 acts up and in many cases you can pole at various parts with a screwdriver and get it going again. A digital acts up and you are now carrying a inert lump of metal (sometimes) and plastic with no idea how to revive it!
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Tom, you pretty much summed up what I was going to say.
 
I do not necessarily fear re-formatting digital pieces. So much has been recorded on JPGs and RAW files that future software will surely interpret past formats. I save everything on hard drives and as they go bad the information will be shifted to newer drives that are only getting cheaper. Negatives do last a long time, but I know people who have lost huge amounts of negatives in disasters that would have been avoided by having digital backups at remote locations. The problem I wonder about is how I will scan negatives ten years from now when my scanner is dead and few companies produce high quality scanners I will pay for. I will probably soon switch to a flatbed and shoot less film as I am already using Leica digital.
 
I guess you need to know what you want your pictures to look like.

Another thread is dedicated to pictures taken with a Minolta and it turned out that people would use their SRT 101 instead of a Nikon FM because the pictures produced look different. The same applies to digital and film. Digital cannot reproduce film, and it's not meant for that anyway!
Now what don't you buy both? 😉
 
I just reviewed my Ektar 100 35mm, 645, 6x7 scanned on a Nikon 9000ED and M9 files. Resolution places the M9 files somewhere near the 645, but I really like something about the film and I'm not sure what I'm seeing. I prefer the M9 workflow with regards to time saving. Also, scanners seem to be dead-end items. Where do we go when we can't buy quality scanners? Ignoring this, I don't like digital for B&W, so if I only could have one camera, I think that I would go film, but I prefer medium format to 35mm (if only one camera was allowed). Given real life, I prefer M9 for color, film for B&W and 6x7 for more serious work in color or b&w.
 
All of the above, plus a Hasselblad and a Linhof!!!!!

Actually, last year we chose an M6 w/ 35mm cron and a Nikon 9000 over a D3--not an M9, but it does speaks to the question in part.
 
I don't think we have to worry about not having film scanners in the future. There are millions if not billions of images on film that will only become more interesting over the passage of time. Archives and museums will continue to have a need to scan materials for decades to come. Plus, today's high end scanners will also be an option on the used market. I'd love to have a Flextight scanner on my desk, that may be possible down the road.
 
erik said:
I don't think we have to worry about not having film scanners in the future. There are millions if not billions of images on film that will only become more interesting over the passage of time. Archives and museums will continue to have a need to scan materials for decades to come. Plus, today's high end scanners will also be an option on the used market. I'd love to have a Flextight scanner on my desk, that may be possible down the road.
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I would think that there will be a high end option for some time to come. I was thinking of the new market in which the Nikon 9000ED resides. Even Nikon can't sell enough product to keep the production line open throughout the year.
 
This is so simple. I voted for the M9 so I could sell it for big bucks and stick with my M4 and afford a proper film scanner instead of my V700 (which is pretty good anyway). The M9 is simply not worth $7000.
 
M9....😀

As much as I like shooting film, I don't know how to develop a roll. But I do know how to use photoshop. 😉
 
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