post-digital anyone?

[wblanchard]

I've recently decided to go back to film and sold most of my digital gear. I'm not sure how many are "post digital" like me...but I just had enough of all the hours of tweaking in photoshop to get results somewhat close to what my hexar af camera and good film got with the click of a button. i will not miss setting the AW balance, ISO settings, contrast, sharpness, etc..it just became too much for me.

its amazing how quickly my digital gear depreciated in value too...!

just had to vent and get it off my chest. now i have one last piece of gear to sell on ebay..my pentax *ist DS gear. maybe i will take the money and buy a R3A and lens..unless someone wants to trade. 😀

 

[FrankS]

Another one saved from the digital matrix. Well done!

 

[jaypolaski]

Ah yes, count me among your ranks. I jumped back to film earlier this year, and have not regretted in the least making the switch. I love watching all the other photogs swarming over the latest digital hullabaloo, pining for more in the megapixel race, and worrying about upgrading to the newest sensor. Not to mention all the complaining about sensor dust, and said dusts removal! And they say film is so expensive...HA!

I just sit back with my camera, and laugh as I load another roll of HP5 😉

 

[DougK]

I've been going back and forth on this issue myself after a disappointing recent experience with a high-end digicam (which replaced my venerable Minolta Dimage 7i, a great camera). You can read about it here if you want.

Now, I know somebody's going to say that a digicam ain't in the same league as a DSLR and yes, I'll accept that as a given. Other folks will say "but hasn't he defended digicams in the past?" Yeah, I have; in fact, a digicam convinced me to get serious about photography.

However, this past weekend I threw a roll of cheap Kodak C41 ISO 400 B&W film into my Konica C35 Auto as a film test and had way more fun shooting, got one-hour processing, during which I multitasked by eating lunch and shopping. I discovered when I looked at the prints that I had a higher percentage of shots I liked, 8 out of 24 exposures, that I'd gotten from the digital with far less effort shooting. I spent 15 minutes from start to finish scanning the keepers and about 10 minutes with them in Photoshop to save the original TIFF, remove the magenta cast, sharpen, and then resize and save as a JPEG for online display. If I was going for printed output I would definitely have spent more time but in this instance it wasn't required.

Part of me is still really tempted to get a digital SLR, thinking it might solve my digital woes. I have to admit, I want a shiny new toy to play with. I like fondling new gadgets and learning how they work. Doesn't help advance my skills much, though.

The other part of me says to just spend the money on a decent film scanner. I have plenty of high-quality film cameras already with all the "megapixels" I need to make large prints if I want to.

In the end, I can't see where going all-digital was all that advantageous.

 

[sf]

Funny

Funny

I did the same thing, a year ago, I sold all my film stuff (except my 4x5s) and moved into digital because, as a student, the money factor was important, and I liked to be able to shoot whenever I felt like it, poor or not.

But, I have since sold that digital, and bought more film stuff, then sold that film stuff and traded for another digital. And I then bought a couple of 4x5 cameras. So I work with the two extremes. It's hard, but I am an extremist. One of those 4x5s is a Crown Graphic, so I pass the Rangefinder test.

 

[andyturk]

Yes and no. I caught a bad case of GAS after borrowing a friend's M6 one weekend. As a result, I picked up a used one and have been shooting film again for the first time in quite a while.

I do like the control offered by Photoshop for prints though. The ability to crop and tweak in front of my monitor helps make up for a lack of skill behind the lens.

 

[Flinor]

I never made it. Earlier this year I decided that an R-D1 was the camera that I had to have and sold off a number of my film cameras. Providence, in the form of a financial crisis, stepped in before I could sell everything. (I never thought I'd call a financial crisis provident, but the camera money went to solve the crisis.)

Intrigued by digital, I decided to play with my wife's Nikon Collpix 5400. Not an R-D1, but a reasonably nice digicam. It produced decent results, even surprising me with an 11x14 b & w off my Epson printer, and the only things that I could really complain about was the truly bad optical finder and the length of time it took to write a tiff file to the CF card.

But I find my major problem hard to characterize other than to say that I just couldn't get my heart started by using this camera. There was no photographer involvement. Maybe the R-D1 would feel like my other cameras just with a different recording medium, but for the moment I'll stick with my old film rangefinders.

 

[jlw]

I've kind of settled into the middle. I went heavily into digital because I had to: I shoot a lot for nonprofit organizations for whom the cost of film and processing is a significant burden, and most of my pictures wound up on web pages, CDs, in print publications designed digitally, etc. I had tried following a film > scanner workflow for these pictures, but the time investment in scanning was so huge that it just wasn't working.

So I kept my film cameras but started out digitally with an Olympus C-2020 (the first digicam I could find that had a reasonably fast lens, manual control options, and a decent b&w mode), then moved to a C-4040 (which I still use as a 'garage camera'), and finally selling my film SLR gear and taking the plunge with a Nikon D100 system.

While this solved my scanning problems, and quality wasn't an issue, I didn't really enjoy working this way -- largely because I've never really liked SLRs, even though I've always had to use them for the sake of versatility. So, I was mostly in digital, and mostly unhappy about it.

The R-D 1 changed that. Finally (although at horrifying expense) I had a digital camera that gives results at least as good as my D100's, and that I really enjoy using.

A funny thing happened, though: Eventually, shooting with the R-D 1 also made me want to shoot more with the RF film cameras that I had kept largely for sentimental reasons -- just for the enjoyment of using them, and the "look" they can provide.

I realized that while scanning time is an issue when you need to deliver 100 pictures for a brochure, it's not so much of a problem when you're just going to select your one best picture to print for your own satisfaction.

Now, I happily use the R-D 1 for high-volume projects (especially color, even though it has a great b&w mode) and just as happily use my film RFs for small-volume personal shooting.

 

[sf]

money and the Digicams

money and the Digicams

If I had a nice, plump bank account, I would never touch a digital camera. I WOULD use film scanners though. If you really know what you are doing, there is no good argument for digital cameras except that they cost little to use, and you can shoot thousands of pics without reloading. Are those good arguments? OVerall, I'd say no. But sometimes money makes the decisions.

 

[ChrisN]

I think you nailed it, Gerry, when you said you felt that with digital there's no photographer involvement. I use digital as well as film, and when I simply want an accurate record of a scene, I'll use the digital every time. With film I'm more involved in the whole process, from loading the film cassette from the bulk-loader, loading the camera, selecting a lens, making the judgements about focus and exposure, composing, then developing, scanning and editing the image (I don't have a wet-darkroom). Some might say I'm just burning spare hours, but I'm enjoying the journey as well as the destination.

 

[XAos]

I'm still waiting on Mr Ford to decide manual transmissions are a worthwhile option in an inexpensive car.

 

[wblanchard]

I've had the canon 20d, nikon d70, pentax *ist, and Leica D2. All of them went back and were replaced by my Hexar Af. I recently went shooting in the city with some photographer friends and they were stunned that I went back to film. They pulled out their "L" glass and started to preach canon to me. *I get this all the time. Even with computers, because I run Apple and they use Windows. *

Yes, I use photoshop cs2 for some tweaks here and there on my film scans, but it's very rare that i spend more than 10 minutes on an image. im convinced the latitude of exposure some films like neopan or other give are much better and forgiving than using a digital setting in a DSLR. Besides, i like a little grain in my pictures and not that sterile and too perfect look that digital seems to feed us today.

 

[RML]

Well, what can I say. I was shooting film before I bought me a Eos 300D. I was disappointed with the ergonomics so I didn't touch the camera anymore after only a few weeks.

Went back to film but felt more and more frustrated with the huge amount of time I was wasting scanning film.

FInally, I bought the R-D1. No more wasting time with scanning and none of the awkward ergonomics of the 300D. I'm even shooting the 300D more now, as it supplements my R-D1 in several ways.

But I still have all of my film cameras, even my old Eos 3000. And just recently even got a very nice Kiev. (Tnx Brett!)

So, post digital? Is there really something like that? IMO every serious photographer knows that both digital and film, both SLR and rangefinder, both 35mm film and APS form factor and MF and LF and half frame, have their place. It hardly ever is either this or that.

 

[david b]

For me, it's not so much post--digital as it is post medium format.

I still own a Hasselblad 503cw and a bag full of lenses, but since I got my xpan, my attitude and photography has changed. I am having so much fun and I am actually seeing things different, which is a plus.

 

[pvdhaar]

For me, it's not so much post--digital as it is post medium format.

Same here, the Bronica SQB has been sitting in the closet for more than six months now. I'm having a ball with a Bessa-T and a CV25/Hexanon-50. It's the portability that makes this combo a winner.

 

[hth]

I have a slight move in the opposite direction at the moment, as I got my first digital camera yesterday. It is a KM X50, about the size of two rolls of 120, which fits easily in a pocket.

I just decided that the small size and weight gave something I could not get with the film cameras I use (Leica M sized is the smallest). It would also be nice to try a digital camera as I cannot forsee any for me suitable digital camera coming on the market anytime soon (that I can afford). Besides, the price was right (ex-demo).

No, it was not GAS, it was curiosity, sort of. 🙄


/Håkan

 

[jaapv]

I'm still waiting on Mr Ford to decide manual transmissions are a worthwhile option in an inexpensive car.

That is a very USA type of remark 😉 the rest of the world is more or less the other way around....An automatic transmission was not even available for my Jag which, though not really inexpensive, is, in the end, one of Mr. Ford´s offerings 😀 .

On the digital vs. film topic: I moved from SLR (Leica R) to DSLR (Canon 10D), shot only digital for a year,got superb, silky smooth, sharp and stunning shots, bought a Leica Digilux2 and that started me using the Leica M stuff I had, gathering dust, again for reasons I couldn't explain. Now the 10D is relegated to makro and long tele, the Canon lens collection is largely sold and it is± 10D 10%-Digilux2 50%-Leica M 40%. I sat down and looked through my albums again some days ago, and found that the Canon shots were well... dead, despite the technical quality, the Digilux shots were far better in a photographic sense and technically fine as well and prints from the scanned Leica M shots still slightly more pleasing, despite seeming to loose out very slightly in technical sharpness etc. to the Digilux, probably due to my learning curve on scanning technique. But then I projected some slides! :angel:. So I figure the best thing to do is carry on the way I am now, in some halfway semi-digital limbo. But I must find a cure for this GAS :bang:

 

[VinceC]

>>>Quote:
Originally Posted by XAos
I'm still waiting on Mr Ford to decide manual transmissions are a worthwhile option in an inexpensive car. <
>>.That is a very USA type of remark the rest of the world is more or less the other way around....<<

Jaapv,
I understood XAos's remark to refer to the venerable Model T, which had a very peculiar two-gear semi-automatic transmission by modern standards. Most inexpensive cars in the United States have a manual-transmission option. It's the more mainstream family cars that don't have manuals. I moved back from Europe in 1999 and searched for a used Toyota four-door family car with a manual transmission similar to what I'd just had in Germany. The dealers thought I was quite eccentric, and I never did find one.

 

[MacDaddy]

Well, I have to join the crowd and say I just went back to film from 5 years of digital as well. For me, it was some of the same issues Gerry stated; namely, that my heart couldn't "get" into digital like it's now into film.
Call me crazy, but I felt that I didn't have control of the creative process with digital as much as with film. Besides, as someone else pointed out, I spent more time fiddling with camera controls than with composition and actually taking photos as opposed to pictures ( Now THERE'S a topic for a good discussion!)
Having spent the last five years of my IT career supporting various Advertising agencies and their networks, I can also identify with Jim (thanks again for the Leningrad!) about costs and the need for a fast workflow. My personal thoughts are that pros have embraced digital so quickly because of those reasons, not because of any kind of love affair with it. The ones I've talked to, at least, tell me they still enjoy the creative process more with film than with digital.
Having stated that, though, I hope WE wind up like I have with computers, where my beloved Macintoshes now co—exist with windoze machines, and find a happy medium where we can all have some of both cameras, but love our film ones more.

 

[cbass]

Wow...20 posts on and still no flame war. A civil thread...this sure ain't like that other big photography forum 😉 .

I happily use both formats and there's only one thing that bugs me about digital: it's still an emerging technology in many respects. Cameras, sensors and procesors are becoming obsolete nearly as fast as they are introduced. Personally, I'm not ready to upgrade my camera every 16 months, nor do I wish to. I'm still using my Canon A40 because every time I considered an upgrade, Canon pulled the plug on the model I was trying to upgrade to 🙁 (A75, A95).

There are advantages and disadvantages to both formats and learning to work with the strengths of each one is challenging and fun. That's why we're all here, right?