Not again a digital vs. film rant please.....

[dave lackey]

Can you pursue digital photography like film photography?

I don't mean by this if you can reproduce the look of film in digital media. There are software solutions out there that give a fair approximation of the 'film look'. What I mean is, can you approach the process of taking photographs with a digital camera the way you do it with an analog one?

What defines the analog way? I think it's the deliberate approach you take with it. I want to make each frame as good as I can. This stems from the olden times as a student when money was tight and film expensive. Well, money still IS tight and film even more expensive to use today. But it's not only this aspect, it's the whole process of using a film camera that forces you to slow down, to THINK about your picture, to visualize it, to plan it and finally to press the shutter and HOPE it turns out about the way you intended it to.

I simply get a kick out of using an analog, manual camera and what’s more, a Rangefinder or scale focus camera that just restricts me to do all this before clicking away.

Of course, when I use my X100 I try to behave! I try not to chimp, but the urge is there. I turned off picture review, turned off the back screen, never using it to compose, really trying to do it like I do it with the CL. The fact that the X100 has a prime, fixed lens in fact made me buy it and I NEVER regretted this. The 35 is really all I need as I found out.

I even try to wait a day or two before loading the pictures up to my computer to review them, all in order to make it feel like analog. But it’s still a digital camera, and just KNOWING I could just click away and make my choice among the pictures later, KNOWING I could take a peek at the pictures immediately is disturbing my peace of mind…..

Perhaps I’m a desperate case, longing for the Goode Olde Times (they were neither good or better than today!), or I’m a hopelessly outdated model (turning 50 this year)?

Digital photography, in my opinion, is all about convenience, and only that! Quick results; cheap, if you don’t count the fact that cameras become obsolete in a year or two and the urge to buy new ones is too strong (the X100s is calling!!); you have a myriad possibilities in just one camera with programs, settings like Auto-ISO, HDR……

Analog, on the other hand, is a hassle. No, really! It is! Load a roll of low ASA B&W film and you are stuck with it for at least the next days (I’m a slow shooter). Then the film is done, out with it and off to the lab (I’ll eventually start developing myself when and if film will be my final decision). The labs around here are slow, at least a week to get your pictures back as they all send the films off to foreign lands to develop…..

OK, after a week you get the negatives back. One look to confirm that hopefully most are adequately exposed (and I am bad at judging them), then they have to be scanned…. Oh man, the time spent, shall I say lost, puzzling about the scanner settings.

Then they are on the computer. Cool, now the digital and analog ways come together, as it’s useless to try to print on my Inkjet printer. Expensive disasters are the product! So I can send them online to a printing service (quite inexpensive and OK results), or, with the negatives, bring them to the lab and wait (again) for the prints.

Now what if I did it all the old way, with light table, and only real prints (by a lab, as I definitely don’t trust myself in a darkroom).

I just hope I’m not alone being torn between the two worlds of photography, or are they just one? It’s the picture that counts, no? Or is it the media? I don’t know and as I am the kind of guy who takes forever to reach a bad decision, I guess I’m stuck.

And by the way, going digital AND analog is not an option as I would then procrastinate for hours about which camera to take. One camera is my way, choices disturb me!

Thanks a lot for hearing me out.

The answer is, what matters to you.

For some, it is the print. Others, it is the shooting. For others, it is the gear. For me, it is more than one thing. It is even therapeutic.

I take inspiration from Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother, Theo...

“Well, and yet it was in these depths of misery that I felt my energy revive and I said to myself, I shall get over it somehow, I shall set to work again with my pencil, which I had cast aside in my deep dejection, and I shall draw again, and from that moment I have had the feeling that everything has changed for me, and now I am in my stride and my pencil has become slightly more willing and seems to be getting more so by the day. My over-long and over-intense misery had discouraged me so much that I was unable to do anything.”

The point is, find what works for you and pursue it with a passion!

 

[Roger Hicks]

Yes. Especially with Leica Ms.

Cheers,

R.

 

[hepcat]

The problem for me lies in the act of deciding what camera to use on a given day, for a specific object. It's purely personnal and comes from my difficulty to take decisions. It's a mind thing, call me crazy but I'll waste the right moment because I'll be worrying about the camera to use!

So I decided to go digital, even if part of me longs to handle those beautiful film cartridges and try to fiddle the film into those stupid Leica CL winder tabs.

I still stick to my decision, though I dry-shoot the CL a lot those last days, waiting for my x100s.

I'm waiting for the last test film with the CL before putting it in the classifieds!

Minimoke, it's not crazy but I think that somewhere along the way you've been led down the wrong path. I'll grant you that this is a gear-oriented forum. That said, the gear was designed to perform a task, and that task is making images. There are many ways to make the same image, and the path is much less important than what your images have to say. Whether you have a digicam or a film cam is quite irrelevent... as long as you are competent to capture your vision. THAT is what the gear is all about. Of course you have to be comfortable with your gear, but whether the images are captured on acetate or stored as bits and bites, when they're printed they're images. Sometimes I've been known to take BOTH a digital and film body out at the same time! The one I have in my hand at the moment the image arises is the right one for the task. There's no agonizing about it.

Shoot what you like, but don't be paralyzed by your options. Take a camera out and go shoot with it. Just like the old Peter-Paul Almond Joy-Mounds candy bar commericials used to say "Some times you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't!"

And forgive me, but "dry-firing" a camera is, unless you're testing the shutter mechanism, a waste of time. Spend that time and effort making images!

Nothing, Roger. You're rolling along just fine.

G

Thanks, Godfrey.

 

[MiniMoke]

Oh well, another day, another way!

I changed my order from the Fuji X100s to an X20..... surprise!!

I will of course keep the Leica CL with it's wonderful lenses and the Olympus Trip I love so much. I can't be without film. Tried and failed. Nearly listed the Leica on the 'Bay and on this forum, but no, just couldn't do it....

I practiced my scanning techniques, I shot some film and I'm waiting for my X20. It will give me the perfect all round camera for the casual shooting, the quick-and-dirty-carry-with-me-every-day-camera (QADCWMEDC). Zoom when I want, the ISO I need, color or B/W and everything else at my fingertips, albeit at lesser quality than the X100. But I'm willing to accept this (and I can't afford an X100s AND the film cameras.....).

But definitely my love will stay with film - Thanks Godfrey!!