Why Do You Still Shoot Film?

True consumer digital cameras, those priced $500 or less, have woeful sensor sensitivity and very narrow exposure latitude. Shooting at ISO 80 with flash and slow focusing isn't my thing.
 
I like analog toys. I like intuitive controls. (Iknow, a Kiev/Contax couldn't be intuitive to anybody but a mechanical engineer, but then I are one...).
I know how to do it. I have the gear. Given enough time I can make a clockwork camera in my basment. (at my age, health-risk tables indicate that I shouldn't bother to start...)
Film is permanent, archival. I've printed my grandfather's glass negs.
Digital is magical. Black magical. Steals your soul, not an image of it. Hard to get subjects to give up toenail clippings...
But it is a good subsistitute for the old poloroid. Check the shot, bracket your exposure, toss the poloroid. And you don't have to stick it under your arm pit to develop it in cold weather.
 
There would be many reasons why I do not use digitals, and even today I´m still pursuing some degree of perfection with film.
Quality: that´s a subjective issue but I do consider there is no digital camera able to bring today the quality any film camera can (at least until a 60.000.000 pixels and 24 x 36 mm sensor B&W camera exists at an affordable price; the day this camera or replaceable back exists, I will go digital).
Results: I know what I will get at the end of the process, even trying new film or paper.
Magic: there is no magic in digitals, but in film you have a ribbon and few minutes later you have ¡mages on it, later you have a white paper in the easel, and in minutes you have a print....
Preferences: I like it!!

Ernesto (not a consumer).
 
...i mainly work in black and white, blanco y negro, blanc et noir, schwarze und weiß.

...for my tastes digital b&w just doesn't look right to me.

...i enjoy working in the darkroom....no phone, no outside world, the scent of the chemicals.

...i like the way prints from film look.

...i can hand a polaroid to a new friend i've just met whenever, wherever i travel.

...i only need to please myself and film does that thoroughly.

...i like to print 16x20 and 20x24 and i can afford to in a my darkroom.

...i enjoy watching a print come up in a tray...truly magical some 30+ years down the road.

...i prefer the hard ware, the cameras, whether mechanical, electronic, manual or auto-focus.

...i enjoy the entire process of developing my own film and printing my own negatives.

...i can always scan my negatives and have an electronic link to the world .

...so i can use my laptop to surf and lurk and browse and graze and hook up with the world.

...that's abou it.

hasta la vista, adieu, dazvidanya, fino al prossimo tempo, auf wiedersehen, and later y’all
kenneth
_______________________________________
"...patience and shuffle the cards" miguel cervantes
"nothing can be learned" herman hesse
"everybody knows everything" jack kerouac
"some memories are realities and better than anything" willa cather
" doo-wacka doo, wacka doo" roger miller
"we have met the enemy and they is us !" walt kelly (pogo)
“a mans cartilage is his fate” phillip roth
 
ErnestoJL said:
Quality: that´s a subjective issue but I do consider there is no digital camera able to bring today the quality any film camera can (at least until a 60.000.000 pixels and 24 x 36 mm sensor B&W camera exists at an affordable price; the day this camera or replaceable back exists, I will go digital).
Click to expand...


At the moment Rodenstock HR lenses resolve enough for a MF digital sensor with 39.000.000 pixels. So you may never get 60.000.000 with a 24x36 mm sensor.


You can get 60.000.000, and more, pixels with LF cameras and scan backs, if you don't mind "exposure" times over 20 minutes.

With the tools I have at home, I get 8 Mpixels from film and 6 from digital.

I just like to use my cameras, image quality or being unable to switch a dSLR to manual is not a problem for me.
 
One of the reasons I still shoot sheet film is that there's no digital equivalent that an average fine-art enthusiast can use for a buck a shot.

No, seriously, call me back when I can get 200+ megapixels from a student-priced camera. And make sure it has movements.
 
I shoot film because then I don't care if my hard drive crashes and because the cameras I like using only work with film.
 
Because, for 10% of the price I calculated for a decent SLR system with plenty of memory and backup, I now have an LTM system consisting of 2 bodies and 3 lenses. The LTM system oozes quality and is a joy to handle, like, I'm sure, the pretty high end DSLR system I was aiming for. But it's mechanical precision instead of "these buttons feel better and the screen is still visible in sunlight". The longer I live, the more I appreciate simple things that are designed and built as close to perfection as the manufacturer could manage. LTM has that feeling, even the Zorki I have has it, but no way I could've bought that feeling in any digital system for the €400 I spent now.

For €7.5, I have development and scans for *any* 35mm film. That'll take me a long way into the future and I'm hoping that, if film should ever become scarce, there will be digital cameras around that give me a similar feeling.

Oh yeah, and I actually enjoy friends and family looking at me like I'm from Mars, when I say I bought a 50 year old film camera :)


Peter.
 
I do photography not because I have to but because I want to.
I dislike digital photography and find it cold and life-less.
I enjoy the craftmanship of the quality cameras and the lenses.
Call me a dinosaur, but as long as I have the option of choosing the medium, I will use film.
I don't have the time for the digital computer work. I want to enjoy the act of photography when it happens. These days I am using film and then having it scanned, so I am doing both; film and digital. I agree with most of the above statements. I add to those; my wife does not like the way digital photos look. This is enough for me. It is settled [for me]. To each his own. I am happy with film. Let's move on.
 
I am a SilverHalidesaurous... it's difficult moving on when you're fossilized in a pre-historic era... but I like it where I am. Slow evolution beats revolution any day!
 
Hi NickTrop,

A couple of years back I read some very incisive posts you wrote on the Panasonic/Leica products (was it in Steve's Digicams?). I owned a Lumix FZ-20 at the time (I don't any more) but I learned agreat deal from your posts. Good to see you here.

The reason I abandoned digital and now shoot only film is because I enjoy working with available light (although in my case one should call it 'unavailable light'). I found that rangefinder cameras combined with very fast lenses give me results I am actually pleased with.

There are of course many more good reasons to shoot film - I can only hope that I will have the pleasure to discover them as I go along.

Regards,
 
Because film photography is a night in the forest, and digital a night on a bus station bench.

Ian
 
Because I love the magic of film. From putting the film in the camera, all the way to the finished print on the wall. It's sensual. :)
 
For many reasons:

  1. The danger of it
  2. The patience required
  3. The fact that it's a challenge
  4. It requires thought at every stage (I only have one camera that isn't completely manual; and that only has automatic metering)
  5. It's CHEAP! (if you want it to be... old cameras, develop yourself)
  6. The smell
  7. The fact I can make a wet print and see the image appear before me. It is as close to magic as I'll ever get.
  8. But mostly, the physical nature of it. I can hold a piece of film that was hit by light that bounced of the subject. And prints made from it are also touching those same grains. There is a connection that runs right through with film. A digital image isn't "photography" as the Greeks know it (light writing), it is only light recording. A digital image is identical to every copy ever made and transmitted around the world. Each of the little bit of hard disk space that the image then sits on has no connection whatsoever to the subject of that image.

Notice I never mentioned results...

Digital will match the results of film, if it hasn't already (chips are being developed that have similar dynamic ranges etc) and the target always seems to be filmlike response so it surely will. I expect that digital people will soon be able to apply settings that make their camera sensors mimic the response of the different films we know and love, generate realistic grain etc. What will happen then? I know I'll stick with film for as long as I can. It's the process that's important, not the results. Film has both.
 
I prefer the analog camera interface; it's generally easy to figure out most any analog camera. Frankly, even the Fuji GA645 is more "digital" than I like. :)
 
tetrisattack said:
No, seriously, call me back when I can get 200+ megapixels from a student-priced camera. And make sure it has movements.
Click to expand...

Not without a major breakthrough in optics. We may get to 80 or 100 MPixel in the next five years, at least Rodenstock claims their HR lenses are good enough for that.
 
tetrisattack said:
No, seriously, call me back when I can get 200+ megapixels from a student-priced camera. And make sure it has movements.
Click to expand...

hehe... a dreb & a lensbaby :D

Seriously tho, I've seen "students" spend much more for a camera than most of my RF's. Certainly my Calumet would cost more than my dreb. LF glass is _not_ cheap.

Back to the question. I shoot film because I can, and I still have fun doing it. Same answer for digital.
 
I've had my digi slr for two months now and and haven't shot a single roll of film since I bought it. However now that I've become more used to digital I'm starting to see it more as an alternative to film rather than a replacement, I look at images and think that they would have been better on film. The one thing that really excites me about digital is that it should make long term documentary projects more viable but so far I've not seen any. Until digital develops its own working practices and asthetic it can only 'ape' rather than replace film. For the most part recent photography has been overly concerned with making digital 'film like' until digital is freed from these constraints I don't think contemporary photography will move forward. Film and digital are two separate media.
 
First, film is a medium. Reala or NPH or Velvia 50 or Provia 100 will all have a particular and unique signature. Right now, we don't the luxury of installing different sensors and firmware into our digi cameras. Yes, there's digi post processing, but that's a whole different ball of wax.

Second, cameras are tools. Like many others, I haven't found a digital camera in one of my prefered form factors. Right now, we have P&S digicams and the DSLR. I have a Nikon D70, a prettty typical DSLR design.

But the DSLR it's not my prefered design. It's too large, does too much, lacks traditional controls and interfaces (cable release, PC socket, etc.)

I'd greatly prefer a FM3a-D with a full frame dedicated B&W sensor. The FM3a film counterpart is a wonderful camera. Sturdy, easy to load, small, nice VF with high magnification, and so on and so forth. Give me plenty of pixels to print high quality 11x17 and it's a camera I'd be happy to own for a decade or more.

Or, I'd greatly prefer a Leica DM or Zeise D-Ikon. Blah blah.

And while their at it, solve the sensor dust problem for us, so I don't have to worry about that. And put nice, high mag viewfinders on affordable digi bodies.

My point is that, while I do use my D70, it's bulky, has too many options, but still lacks many basic features, doesn't fit into a small satchel camera bag, and so on.

There are no affordable digi tools - yet - to match my Bessa R, 2 Leica M6TTL's, Nikon FM3a and the associated lenses. Or even my Rollei AFM35 P&S. Relatively small, sharp tools: lightweight, good viewfinders, simple and predictable meters, superb prime lens optics, produces a lovely 24x36 negative on the film of one's choice, and so on and so forth.

Hopefully, as the digital market matures, we'll see new digital camera designs apart from the digicam and the large DSLR design.

Until then, I'll continue to shoot film because the film shooting tools are better, IMHO.

Scott
 
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