One distinct advantage of film

[Bolo Kukus]

Another similar tale of woe. Two years ago I was cleaning a newly-acquired Rolleicord 16 exposure kit. I had dismantled it, on a clean sheet of white paper, but the spring on the screw-on button suddenly had a mind of its own and "sprung" - somewhere in the room.

I did all the known tricks, swept carefully and microscopically inspected the dust pan, got out the Hoover and covered the small slit vacuum head and did over the room completely, swept again, even got down on my knees with a flashlight and a magnifying glass to search for it. To no avail. These springs nowadays can't be replaced, but fortunately for me I discovered the 16 kit worked without it, more or less. So I made do.

Two years later we were ready to move. I went thru the room again, cleaning it - and found the missing item, which had sprung at least two meters from where I was cleaning the kit and lodged itself into the lower frame part of our sliding window. It is now back in its rightful place, on the 16 exposure kit. The wheel (so to speak) came full circle...

When I was in boarding school in the 1960s our professor of philosophy (who was also our religious "educator", which all sort of makes sense to me now), told us in class about the theory of The Invisible Hole - apparently every room has one, and it collects all those items that go missing and often as not never turn up again. So all one has to do is to believe in this hole (like all other such mythology), and eventually in time, lo and behold!! all the lost items are found.

Unfortunately for me, except this once with the Rolleicord spring, The Invisible Hole theory has never really worked...

 

[zuiko85]

One distinct advantage of film is that I can use all those beautiful old film cameras I have.

gelatin silver print (color skopar 50mm f2.5) leica m2 black paint

Erik.

Bingo! When someone asks me why I would shoot film I tell them it is because that is what the cameras I like take. Have always liked mechanical things. Precision mechanical instruments. There is nothing more lovely in the hands ( for me anyway) than a all mechanical camera. Don’t even like the electronic plast-o-blob film cameras of the late 70’s early 80’s forward. For instance, a basic Canon TLb with a 50 f1.8 would appeal to me far more than any EOS 35mm, even though they are very advanced (but battery dependent) film cameras.

 

[cboy]

Ive had a similar experience to the op whereby no fault of my own lost the contents in the sd card (corrupted sd). However film by nature has its own disadvantages in terms of pre/ post processing errors of film i.e camera light leaks, pre exposed film, damaged of film from cartridge unloading, film processing error.
SO id still choose digital over film if i had to choose.The OP should comfort from the fact that while mishaps do occur often, and that the onus falls mainly on the photographer, the responsibility also goes to the manufactuer to forsee such events and prevent data loss to occur from the outset. Ie built in redundancy.
Data loss and having built in redundancy to mitigate the issue is quite important even to non professionals and prosumer alike. Unfortunately there are still many current cameras that still dont offer dual card slots. It should expected that even lower tier camera models to have data redundancy...

 

[580/Q]

Another advantage of film is that it is easier to find a used negative, just mark it on the page of the negative album. Digital code numbers are very clumsy.


Erik.

Beautiful picture, Erik. I totally agree. I've gone through so many asset management systems that I've just settled on simple numbering codes
.
What I do now seems simple, for me, anyway: images are labeled yearmonthday_sequence_clientname.jpg....

"20100122_275_Jxxxxxx.jpg" means the shot for Jxxxxxx Oxxxxxxx Bxxxxxx was the 275th frame shot on the 22nd of January in 2010.

I remember an interview with Jay Maisel and a couple of other cats and his point was the only thing that matters is how fast you can find that particular image. He has an insane number of stored slides never mind the hundreds of thousands of digital images he has stored and he can find anything in a few minutes, often less.

Rigor and discipline in the dump, edit, and identification seems to be the key. My wife told me that there would be dire consequences if I let things get to where Winogrand wound up - "giving up" as he puts it in that interview with Barbaralee Diamonstein at the New School.

Cheers,

Shane

 

[boojum]

Lost in the car: lens cap, 72mm for a Sony 24 - 240 zoom. Vanished into the bowels of a tiny 2001 Honda Insight. I looked and looked and finally just caved and bought another from B&H. It was nowhere under the passenger seat which is where it fell. Yeah, you can see this one coming. Yesterday I slid the driver's seat way forward to check for something and some evil Djinn had placed a 72mm Sony lens cap under the driver's seat. It is so nice having two.

As for digital vs film. One plus of film is that you change your sensor when you change the film type. The downside is the drengle of getting it processed and then the drengle of enlargements. The darkroom and the mystery of the chemicals was fun. Up until I could just upload the images to a computer and see them right away. And print them right away.

Photo editing software does not have to be expensive. GIMP is a monster for working with JPEG's. It does everything and anything and is free. Darktable and RawTherapee both do DNG's for free. There are others, these are cross platform. So cost of editing is not a valid complaint unless you like paying fees to software foundries. Yes, a good color printer can cost but how much do good color prints cost when bought? And for enlargements I just got three 12 x 18's done by Costco. Excellent. I forget the exact paper but it is heavy stock Fuji semi gloss. There is a shipping charge so order a bunch. At $3.99 for a 12 x 18 plus around $5 shipping for a good quality print it is a good deal. $15.96 for three and delivered to my door. Bottom line, digital works fine for me.

Lesson number one of this thread: be careful changing SD cards, and 72mm lens caps. ;o)

 

[ChrisPlatt]

Twenty years ago I lost a rubber eyecup from a Nikon F or F2 on a long autumn nature walk.
Retracing my steps I actually found it! Amazing considering all the leaf litter on the ground...

Chris