Where do you stand?

Where do you stand?

  • 80-100% digital

    Votes: 142 18.0%

  • 80-100% film

    Votes: 281 35.6%

  • both film and digital

    Votes: 286 36.2%

  • hybred: film with digital printing

    Votes: 80 10.1%
  • Total voters
    789
Assuming the fuji X100 matches up with the hype, I'll soon be 100% digital. Its taken some serious engineering to get me to this place. I've tried digital a few times over the past 4 years since discovering RFF. I've wanted to pull away from film because of the incompatibility with my income (getting down to zero these days), time availability for trips to film processor and scanning (having a nine-yr. old kid around the house puts a serious dent in discretionary time for photo stuff).

Up till now, two things have made it difficult for me to make the switch to digital:
1) lack of significant sensor dynamic range in a reasonably priced camera, and
2) lack of a camera with a large sensor and small rangefinder-like body with an optical viewfinder.

The Nikon D7000 satisfies #1 and the Fuji X100 will hopefully satisfy #2. At that point, I will have come nearly full circle from when this 'transition' journey began for me. When I first came to RFF I owned a Nikon F3 and a Hexar AF... analog twins of my new kit??
 
Years in digital was bliss, but it was an ignorant bliss... I'm shooting a bunch of film now, but shoot a lot more digital, simply because hard disk space is cheap, and I'm much more willing to do daring experiments with digital.
 
Just ordered about $850 worth of film -- 120, 220, 35mm in both BW (100 and 400 ASA), color negative and color slide films (Astia, Velvia 50). Should keep me set for a couple of years. I see stocks of many films at Freestyle and B&H are getting low and wanted to make sure to get some rolls while many of them are still pretty inexpensive (less than $3.00 a roll).

Of course, this purchase gives away my preference between film and digital, as well my collection of cameras:

Digital: Canon Elph 800

Film: 4 Mamiya 6 (w/2 50mm, w/1 75mm, w/1 150mm), 3 OM-4T, 1 OM-4 (w/upgraded circuit), 3 OM-2n, 1 OM-1n, 2 OM-1 MD, plus Zuiko 21mm f.2.0, 24mm shift f3.5, 24mm f2.8, 28mm f2.0, 35mm f2.0, 50mm f2.0 macro, 50mm f3.5 macro, 50mm f1.8 MIJ, 90mm f2.0 macro, 100mm f2.0, 35-80 f2.8, 75-150 f4.0, Tamron SP 17mm f3.5, Tamron SP 80-200 f2.8, Tamron SP 35-80 f2.8, Vivitar Series 1 28-90 f2.8, Vivitar Series 1 70-210 f3.5, Vivitar Series 1 70-210 f2.8-4.0, Vivitar Series 1 90mm f2.5 w/1:1 adapter ("Bokina"), bunch of Olympus motor drives, flash units, macro tubes, etc.
 
100% Film now
3 Months ago I tried out a Lumix LX-5 compact as an allrounder but I wasn't that much convinced. Its not that the camera was bad it was just that in the end I thought the money for the digital is better spent on rolls of film, in terms of value and fun.
 
I take photos for fun, as a passion - not to turn out 100's of images commercially. I don't shoot enough for cost to be a major issue and I process all my own mono and colour films (35mm and MF). So I have sold most of my digital gear to buy more interesting film cameras.

My simplest answer is that I now have a full-frame compact that cost me £25, the Olympus RC.

5426523352_d8b1990b33_b.jpg

Olympus RC, Neopan Acros 100
 
I recently bought a GRDIII to supplement my Olympus XA, but cannot convince myself that I like the digital images enough to keep the camera. Yes, they are nice, but something about film still has a hold on me. Digital is too clean, almost sterile compared to that warm analog feeling of film. Or to take it further-- digital is for the recording of what happened in a point in time, while film makes everything appear as art.

In music, it would be like comparing Boards of Canada's analog sound to something like Autechre's mostly computer generated effects-- this might not mean much to the older crowd here, but if you know the two artists, I think you'll understand.
 
All digital, 100%, nothing else.

If I could process film without having to do the hippy hippy shake and I could find a scanner that wasn't hugely expensive and incredibly slow, I'd maybe shoot some film.
 
Both. I like film because it lets me use classic mechanical cameras, and I enjoy using working antiques. Also, I find film SLRs to be superior to digital SLRs for hiking and taking macro photos of plants (classic, manual-focus film SLRs and their lenses are smaller and lighter than DSLRs, and manual-focus SLRs have brighter viewfinders for easier manual focusing than autofocus SLRs).

But compact digital cameras like my DMC-LX3 pack so much functionality into a small package that you just can't beat them for a compact, carry-with-you-all-the-time, camera.
 
Digital for the most part, although I use perhaps 3-5 rolls of film a year, depending on where I am and what I'm doing. When my M9 was being fixed early this year, I shot about five rolls with the M7. Still haven't developed three black and whites that I have vowed to do myself for the first time.

Every time I think about shooting more film, I think about how much control and quality I get with my M9 and even my GXR. So my film cameras become toys for fondling and the occasional shot, and my digital cameras get all the work.
 
From 2004-2010 I was 100% digital. Then, about six months ago, I decided to switch directions slightly from the 100% commercial work I'd been doing.

On a lark, I had a handful of 300mb drum scans made from ten year old 6x7 B&W negatives back in January...while I'd not expected that endeavor to have the impact it did, since February of this year, I've bought a Mamiya 7ii system and an RZ system to include multiple bodies/backs/lenses. In spite of the decline in analog equipment pricing, I've spent far more in getting back into film than a top-of-the-line FF digital system setup would have cost (which I already own).

I'm not going to rant onward about the benefit of one capture method over another but for what I want to do, the 'look' of grain from a MF piece of film is closer to what I'm after. 4x5 would be even better but in spite of years of running view cameras, I never managed to get to the point where I was oblivious to the equipment so I'm sticking with MF. That said, in terms of ongoing cost, shooting film takes a continual toll on the wallet in terms of film/processing costs that digital bypasses.
 
I too have suddenly gone back to film, from 100% digital. I could have bought an M8, but film has proved to me again that is has a certain something. I can't put my finger on it though.
 
More and more film.
Digital is easy and can look OK

In the beginning I went crazy pixel peeping.
Then i just looked at the complete picture/ print and it clicked.

Film just looks so much better.
 
I not really in digital-business, only own tiny digital compacts(for reasons). But i have a lot of analogue cams mostly 35mm. i am just digging them out again. have now-beside contax/yashica/zeiss also nikon. when the right cams are out i can easily get eighter nikon or canon or sony nex. zeiss can be mounted on canon and sony nex.
will dig out my rotapancams.
rumors say that kodak is working on a highlevel but affordable MF-scanner.
despite there business problems i am still believing in that important tool.
Its a pity sigma sd1 is so expensive. That would be the right digital tool. sigma will offer high-end lenses to match it better.
 
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