Should I bother with film?

As long as there is one color film and one black and white film available I will shoot pictures on film.

And probably long after that since they have these things called Freezers.


I expect to be on this Earth another 30 or 40 years, so I don't think film will disappear completely before that.
 
Ofc you should. And why again the dooms day things about film ? Imo, nowadays you have far greater choice of films than in the HEY DAY of film - just check some online shops. Color maybe is getting rarer and expensive, but Black and white is still going strong :)
 
Some were much more lucky in the past in terms of film selection.
I'm scanning old ORWO positives from eighties right now. Was my only film for decade or so.
Now slides are gone, but I have dozen+ of b/w film to choose from and finally able to not only get cameras I want but afford them as well and have space for the darkroom. All of it was luxury to me in eighties.
 
Yea, but not just the eastern block thing ( ie forget about anything not from it ) Film has gotten better with the years, resolution , grain , high speed films , slow ,T-grain films, cubic emulsion , classic emulsuon orthochromatic, panchromatic, whatever you like
 
I love how the OP took the plunge.

Here's to years of increasingly fun time with film photography to you, ecowarrior!

I'm a former 100% digital weenie who now won't part with film.

And lastly, don't stop until you experienced darkroom printing!
 
Film is awful!
It is automatically archival, for me!
Going thru my early film negatives, thousands of pages..
Only 2 (TWO) pages had faded.
They were done in the 60's by a pro lab.
I lost two years of images when both PC hard drive and back-up drive went turtle.
In the watch industry, the reason for going "electronic" was that folks like me,
assisted in making timepieces last almost indefinitely.
Swiss trained Master watchmaker, doing refresher course, i assembled a new
quartz movement, cased and it became mine!
Almost 18 months later, the calendar gave problems..plastic clips.
I ordered the parts and was informed that the model was "obsolete".
Watch parts are available for many mechanical watches a 100 years old..
Or can be made to fit. No such luck with circuits or other components!
The Photographic Industry learned from the Swiss.
Film and prints will here when digital will be dust in the dark.
 
ecowarrior said:
My memories of shooting film are vague but are very much along the lines of stick-film-in-kodak-instamatic, point, shoot, send film to Boots (UK) for processing, get back terrible photos a week later. Most with "overexposed" stickers all over them.

Anyway, times move on and I'm now the very proud owner of some rather fine digital gear and about 10 years of solid photography under my belt, so I now at least know what I'm doing and am a half-decent (maybe almost half!) photographer.

And I'm kinda wondering about trying film again. Properly. Not just shooting, but the whole darkroom thing too.

One part of it is the idea that I'll never be able to afford a decent digital Leica until those digital leicas I can afford are so old their sensors are rusting (;o). However a nice old M6 with a fair vintage Leica lens is probably about affordable, and besides I also quite fancy medium format too.

There is also something rather romantic about the darkroom and black-and-white particularly.

So getting to my question, is it worth it? It seems from everything I've read/watched/learnt that the cost of the bits and pieces I need for developing b+w film isn't that much, even including an enlarger. The fluid and paper looks to be the stuff that will cost over time but I don't envisage doing a ton of prints, maybe a film or two a month perhaps.

Has anybody else done this? ie. go from being a 100% digital/adobe/send-to-printer photographer and invested time and money in shooting and developing film too. What were your experiences, outlay, advice? Were the results worth it in the end?
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Depends on your subject matter. If you need to bang out a big project I'd go digital. If your subject matter is something you can take your time with try film.

I love film, but alas don't have the time to do film with the quantity I produce and subject matter I shoot.
 
My story is similar to yours (some early film experience, some darkroom, most photography digital). I find medium format much more worthwhile than 35mm film. I think digital conclusively won the fast-and-easy-acceptably-good battle (mostly--not always), but I can't come close to medium format results with digital. Get a Yashicamat or Fuji 6x9. And skip the darkroom unless you have a lot of time to fill (maybe you do?). Scan the film and process digitally. If you get something really magic, you can go back to the film and optically print (though I haven't found cause to do that yet). It's sacrilege to say here, but I haven't felt compelled to jump on the Leica bandwagon. You can beat it with cheaper (admittedly larger) medium format cameras.
 
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