MY problem with digital

[FrankS]

Everyone is different, and that's okay. I'm simply saying what I have figured out for myself. Your mileage WILL vary.

I bought a Fuji XE2 about 13 months ago. Then bought used 27 and 16-50 lenses, XM1 and XQ1 cameras. I love the ease of digital photography and am just as pleased if not more, with the final results of my digital photography. I've taken a few really good digital shots and had some inkjet printed. The Fuji cameras and lenses are probably the most Leica RF- like digital camera experience, (but still don't equal the tactile feel of mechanical film cameras and their controls.)

Here's the problem: I've been seduced and spoiled by the ease and output of digital so that I'm seeing film photography as a (relative) chore. So my film photography has dropped off in favour of digital. But digital photography does not provide me any of the joy of the process that film photography does and I find myself less motivated to bother with any photography at all.

I know what I have to do: I simply have to push myself to get back into the film photography groove so that the inherent positive motivators have a chance to act on me again. New (to me) gear can help provide some inspiration to begin. 🙂

This is just my individual experience.

 

[Stephen Weston]

Totally know where your coming from there. Sometimes I find going in the darkroom a chore but then again sitting in front of a computer drags me down to (he says sitting in front of a computer looking over forums).

 

[johnnyrod]

Know what you mean, I think. I use digital to fill the gaps around my film photography rather than have those gaps.

 

[Godfrey]

I always found going into the darkroom to be a chore—sometimes an enjoyable chore, but always a chore. I still work with film but I minimize the chore aspect by reducing the time to a minimum ... I no longer have a darkroom, I use Agfa daylight load processing tanks (process dry to hanging in 28 minutes), and I scan everything with a raw workflow that doesn't need a lot of per-image tuning to get all the data.

I much prefer rendering, finishing, and printing with image processing software and a high-quality inkjet printer over anything I was ever able to achieve on the finishing end in a darkroom or professional photofinishing lab. It just works better for me.

So why do I still shoot film? Because there are some cameras (like the Hasselblad SWC, the Minox C, the Polaroid SX-70, a Leica M) that are unique and—with the specific character, advantages, and failings of film—see the world in ways that are difficult if not impossible to achieve using digital capture. It doesn't take me much less time to render a digital image compared to a film image once I have the scan in hand, I simply find some of the photographs have a quality I like.

I shoot with my digital cameras in much the same way that I shoot with my film cameras, and produce a fairly similar amount of output per shooting session. The one exception is where the digital capture cameras have capabilities beyond the film cameras—more sensitivity, lower cost, etc—that enable me to be more experimental and opportunistic than I can be with film.

The joy, for me, is in the photography, not the specific technology or process. I might have spent a good bit of my lifetime enjoying the many technologies and processes of photography, but I know I've spent even more of my time enjoying the products of that endeavor.

And yes, this is all a very personal thing, an individual assessment of what an individual likes or dislikes about a personal creative endeavor done with discretionary time and money. I would say very different things if photography to me meant how I earned my rent and food money.

G

 

[Roger Hicks]

Everyone is different, and that's okay. I'm simply saying what I have figured out for myself. Your mileage WILL vary.

I bought a Fuji XE2 about 13 months ago. Then bought used 27 and 16-50 lenses, XM1 and XQ1 cameras. I love the ease of digital photography and am just as pleased if not more, with the final results of my digital photography. I've taken a few really good digital shots and had some inkjet printed. The Fuji cameras and lenses are probably the most Leica RF- like digital camera experience, (but still don't equal the tactile feel of mechanical film cameras and their controls.)

Here's the problem: I've been seduced and spoiled by the ease and output of digital so that I'm seeing film photography as a (relative) chore. So my film photography has dropped off in favour of digital. But digital photography does not provide me any of the joy of the process that film photography does and I find myself less motivated to bother with any photography at all.

I know what I have to do: I simply have to push myself to get back into the film photography groove so that the inherent positive motivators have a chance to act on me again. . . .

This is just my individual experience.

Dear Frank,

Total agreement!

I sometimes suspect that if I hadn't had to adopt digital (because I write for the photo press) I might have bypassed digital altogether.

Cheers,

R.

 

[______]

I like working in the darkroom, but was never satisfied with my color work. So I shoot film for black and white and digital for color.

 

[Roger Hicks]

I like working in the darkroom, but was never satisfied with my color work. So I shoot film for black and white and digital for color.

Same here. Even more so for my wife Frances Schultz, who literally wrote the manual for the Colorstar color analyzer*. She now shoots only B+W film.

Strictly it was a series of articles for Darkroom User, but the manufacturers of the Colorstar asked if they could use them. See http://www.colorstar.nl/info/francolor.html (Part 1) et seq.

Cheers,

R.

 

[FrankS]

Thanks all. B+W film for me too.

Just spent an enjoyable afternoon today (it wasn't too hot) riding on country roads on my 1981 motorcycle with my 1977 SWC/M in the tank bag, looking for images to make. Made 8 exposures. 🙂

 

[noisycheese]

Everyone is different, and that's okay. I'm simply saying what I have figured out for myself. Your mileage WILL vary.

I bought a Fuji XE2 about 13 months ago. Then bought used 27 and 16-50 lenses, XM1 and XQ1 cameras. I love the ease of digital photography and am just as pleased if not more, with the final results of my digital photography. I've taken a few really good digital shots and had some inkjet printed. The Fuji cameras and lenses are probably the most Leica RF- like digital camera experience, (but still don't equal the tactile feel of mechanical film cameras and their controls.)

Here's the problem: I've been seduced and spoiled by the ease and output of digital so that I'm seeing film photography as a (relative) chore. So my film photography has dropped off in favour of digital. But digital photography does not provide me any of the joy of the process that film photography does and I find myself less motivated to bother with any photography at all.

I know what I have to do: I simply have to push myself to get back into the film photography groove so that the inherent positive motivators have a chance to act on me again. New (to me) gear can help provide some inspiration to begin. 🙂

This is just my individual experience.

Nothing says you are required by law to shoot digital - so put your digital cameras away and get your film cameras out.

Put your digital kit away and shoot only film for the next ______ days (I was going to say 90 days). That will get you going on film photography again.

If I were in your shoes, I think that's the way I would proceed. Digital has many pluses; don't let it take the joy out of photography for you.

 

[Pioneer]

I started photography as a forensic photographer and there is very little fun in that. My intro to digital cameras was through my job.

I just enjoy photography with film, and since I do not have to use digital anymore, I rarely do.