Settling for Less or Seeing it for more...

The rare times I grab and use my only digital camera (a Ricoh GR), nowadays, it only makes me want to put it back in the drawer for another year and go back to doing what I really love, film photography. If I go digital, I just can't stop after taking one or two shots of a subject, but unavoidably end up taking many more. Having many slightly different versions of an image and the fact that they costed me no money, no time in the darkroom, no time scanning, for some reason, makes them most often unworth keeping, and in fact I end up deleting all of them, right after viewing them in Lightroom or a few days later.

However, just because I stick to film and even the same developer (Rodinal is the only one I've ever used and can use), that doesn't mean that I or my photography do not change. I do. It does. Everything does..
 
Sometimes I feel down and I buy (order) a few rolls of film.
Then I take my digital camera and start to shoot. The film remain in their packages.
I know there is no logic in this, perhaps it's due to the covid fatigue.
 
It's the hybrid world for me - the roll of T Max that's drip drying as I write this will never see an enlarger. I sold mine as soon as my first dedicated film scanner proved its worth. That, along with the online book printers provide my display outlet for b&w. I use digital pocket cameras to gather research material for paintings and drawings. It all coexists quite nicely.
 
I did a major purge of my camera gear in 2020.

To start with I finally faced the fact that I was no longer a film shooter. Period. I sold all my film cameras.

Next came the realization and acceptance that I liked and needed autofocus; the faster the better. I sold all my M-mount and LTM lenses. Sigma cameras have the slowest autofocus I’ve ever experienced so I also sold 2 of my 3 Sigma foveon cameras and all but 2 of my Sigma mount lenses (that was a lot of lenses).

I did build up my collection of Fujifilm cameras and Fujinon lenses and I expanded into digital medium format with the purchase of the Fujifilm GFX 50R and 2 GFX lenses.

The bottom line is that I sold far more items than I bought and everything I did buy was paid for with the money gained from selling camera gear, gold trinkets and a couple of watches. And, I have money left over.

I am no longer a collector of things. I used to collect safety razors, pocket knifes, watches, coffee cups, and cameras/lenses. Oh, and then there's my collection of music CDs... boxes and boxes of music CDs. At 65 years old I've turned the corner on being a collector. What used to be prized possessions has become a bunch of stuff! Stuff that is taking up room (lots of room).

I'm slowly dealing with properly thinning the herd. And, I feel great about this situation. Less for me is more… more happiness!

All the best,
Mike
 
I think I’m in a different state than most. I fully love digital and have my workflow figured out. So, I bought a 4x5” film camera because I felt it could give me an experience digital and roll film cameras cannot. I don’t feel obligated to make more than one exposure here and there. With roll film cameras, I’d rather just use a digital camera. They serve the same purpose for me. I have to say it’s because I prefer color. If I was a primarily b&w photographer, I might not feel the same about digital.
 
Where am I...???
The last few weeks I gone out with only film...B&W...
I've set up my darkroom twice, if fact that's how I spent all of yesterday...
I'm good with shooting digital, actually enjoy it...
BUT like Helen I started photography back when I was about 14 years old and then it was only film.
Its film I return to when I find myself bored or looking for something new...
Not only shooting film but developing it and wet printing...
Where am I...I've got plenty of film in my closet, just ordered more chemicals and it would be a shame to die without using it all up...
 
Helen, I hope and expect your shift in approach and gear will be productive. With advancing age I've encountered health issues, side-effects of beating off cancer a decade ago. So travel has become inconvenient, awkward, coincidentally fitting in with the restrictions of the pandemic. So, no travel at all this past year, and there're questions for this year. We have long-standing reservations for May in Arizona but may not go. And we have timeshare weeks in Hawaii for November that we may not use again. We have enjoyed travel over the years, with new sights, experiences, and new photo opportunities. We shall see how it shakes out from here.

As to gear and process, I'm in parallel with Yokusuka Mike.
 
I'm at a film-to-digital crossroad. This year I bought an M246, like the camera and workflow a lot, and probably will say farewell to 35mm film. But I'm deferring the decision until I get back to normal post-pandemic shooting and can really get a feel for the Monochrom. People say shoot both, but that's just not how I operate.

John
 
I took a walk yesterday in a local Municipal Gardens and happened to pass a very contented young couple with his and hers film cameras. Hers was an Olympus OM10 and his a Nikon F601 I think. For once I had left home cameraless but it made me glad to see young people enjoying a shared love of photography as I know and love it. I have yet to buy a Digital camera (no need for one in my life) and my conscious choice is to continue using HP5+, albeit in a hybrid workflow, having mothballed my Kaiser enlarger and moved over to scanning. I enjoy the tactility of film and the magic of clockwork timed shutters. I feel somewhat vindicated in my choice after that chance meeting, and less like a luddite stick in the mud. My daughter is a very precocious 4 year old and she gets that Daddy makes pictures with film. She has a keen eye for a photo and has her own little digital, but wants to do it like Daddy. When she is ready, she can. At least she can inherit my cameras, should she choose to. Who knows, when she is old enough I may even bring out the Enlarger and help her to see the real magic.
 
When I started up photography again a few years ago after a hiatus (not complete, but significant), I thought it only made sense to start in digital, and I got a Fujifilm XT-2. Soon after I started to resurrect some film photography for the fun of it. 3 years later, I am shooting more film (especially B&W) than digital by far and loving it. At the same time I do love the XT-2. It (by design I suspect) has the feeling of shooting film and can produce great images. What the future holds? Not sure. But I am moving towards continuing film, and open to more work developing digital also.
 
For me it’s about the process as well as the outcome. I am not a pro so taking pictures is just a hobby. I shoot large format and the fun is scouting locations and then getting up at 5am for the shoot. The resulting print can be breath taking. For street I prefer medium format film because the tonality from a Rolleiflex 3.5 Planar is unmatched (just a bit of personal opinion here). Any format smaller is a compromise because speed, flexibility and portability are the key benefits at the expense of ultimate quality. For this reason I have gone digital for this format because now I have extreme speed and flexibility whereas before I am limited by film speed and limited post processing with film. This is my logic at least. Sold my film M bodies and regret I had not done this sooner.
 
I put off buying digital till around 2006 partly because I felt that before then the value proposition was just not good enough. And also because I was heavily invested in film shooting and was reluctant to end that.

But when I took up digital I found it freed me to be creative. I no longer had to count each shot as I might with film and so could shoot more and that gave me more experience, and that gave me more skill. And more importantly it gave me the means to be serious about post processing. I had tried developing and printing my own film images but found it hard to like and most people do not have the luxury of having a spare room to use a darkroom / lab. I was no different. But with digital all I needed was a laptop and some software, plus the willingness to learn. So I shoot more, I process and experiment more (some succeed - some fail, that's life) and I enjoy it more. Most of all I learned that image making (for me) is about "eye candy" - it's about taking what is captured in the camera and turning it into something unique that makes you want to look at it and forces you to interpret it. At least that's what I can now legitimately aim for because of digital.

So, in short, for me, digital shooting has been an epiphany and it has opened a doorway to thinking differently about making images. It is no longer just about what comes out of the camera. It is about what I can do with those images to make them into something truly creative. For me it has all been good.
 
"f you want to change your photographs, you need to change cameras. Changing cameras means that your photographs will change. A really good camera has something I suppose you might describe as its own distinctive aura.

-- Nobuyoshi Araki

I don’t think about what camera I should use that much. I just pick up the one that looks nicest on the day

-- William Eggleston"

(Copied from tokyo camera style, tumblr)
 
Film. Digital. Its all photography for me in the end. Sometimes "photography" for me is about process as much as image, so film is still in my world. In fact, sometimes the printing process is what I'm all about at the time. Last week, I was immersed in making cyanotypes. Chemicals at a minimum, but still a very "hands on" process. Today it was digital, but with one of my many older lenses.

Y'all get the idea.

Helen, whether you're using film or digital doesn't matter. I'll get concerned if you decide to give up your creative endeavor (photography)!!
 
helenhill said:
I'm sure You have Tales to tell how change molds You...
Click to expand...

Your thread made me realize that I too have a tale to tell.

Last winter, a hit-and-run driver totaled the parked van that I used for my photographic business. Rather than replace it with another working vehicle, I decided to replace it with a Lexus executive coupe because I was considering retiring.

Then the Covid situation started, my photographic business shriveled, and my health deteriorated. Retirement seemed like a good decision.

However, even though I did not need it, I decided to buy a Leica M10 digital rangefinder because I wanted it. I will never recover my financial expenditures for the Lexus and the Leica, but I am happy with my decisions.
 
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