Why Do You Still Shoot Film?

We stopped capital punishment after Ruth Ellis, seems unfair to promote it abroad!!!! Why is there no irony icon?

Back to the issue! film, of any size, for an amateur, is all round the best sensor I can find, no digital dogma involved I scan it for the convenience, wet processing is a pain, sub menus, auto focus, auto exposure, auto flash, are all a pain I find it easier to make beautiful pictures that way, and that’s what it’s all about?
 
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Have to agree!

Have to agree!

All of you have great reasons, even though we don't need any reasons.
As I age, I seem to have collected old things that I like. They weren't always old when I got them, although some were.
I often use my Grandfathers brace and bits, they work just as well as spade bits in an electric drill motor. I plow snow with a 1948 Farmall M that my Dad bought new - such a thrill to run that old machine. I have my Fathers and Grandfathers guns, and my prize is a 1950 Cessna 170 Dad and I picked up at the factory when I was 11.
The feel of an old Nikon, or Yashica, or Rollei in my hands is comforting, and as some have said, I know what's going on inside. I can choose my film and my developing. And as another said, I love the smell of the photo chemicals and seeing the picture come up in the tray.
Besides, there are still those artists that use oils, charcoal etc. and I think we may identify with them.
 
Jocko said:
And I'd just like to add, George, that, before anyone thinks "oh that sounds nice", our British pork pies are generally hideous lumps of clammy gelatinous gristle encased in greasy cardboard. A distinctive product of our national quisine!

Yum! Ian
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The Melton Mowbray is a fine pie... I advise any visitor to this Sceptred Isle to go north of the border among the blue folk and try a deep fried mars bar or a deep fried pizza slice. 😉
 
Jocko said:
Sparrow, I think George and Joe deserve Toad in the Hole with Bubble and Squeak, followed by Spotted Dick and accompanied by Vimto and British Sherry!

Now that's a meal!
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Aha! Now I do believe that Bubble and Squeak is what the Irish call Colcannon (sp?). A quite appropriate name for a potato and cabbage mish-mash! 😱

As we would say on this side of The Pond - "Who cut the cheese?" 😀

Sparrow is about to get to the topic (I've been away for a spell - - Oh Oh, this spells potential disaster since I see Andy K. is the latest "poster boy"! ) :bang:
 
bsdunek said:
All of you have great reasons, even though we don't need any reasons.
As I age, I seem to have collected old things that I like. They weren't always old when I got them, although some were.
I often use my Grandfathers brace and bits, they work just as well as spade bits in an electric drill motor. I plow snow with a 1948 Farmall M that my Dad bought new - such a thrill to run that old machine. I have my Fathers and Grandfathers guns, and my prize is a 1950 Cessna 170 Dad and I picked up at the factory when I was 11.
The feel of an old Nikon, or Yashica, or Rollei in my hands is comforting, and as some have said, I know what's going on inside. I can choose my film and my developing. And as another said, I love the smell of the photo chemicals and seeing the picture come up in the tray.
Besides, there are still those artists that use oils, charcoal etc. and I think we may identify with them.
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bsdunek,

As Tony the Tiger would say:

"Grrrrreate Post"! (Even if he does work for Kellogg's 😀 )

You said it all in a most elegant way.
 
NickTrop said:
Why do you still shoot film?
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I still shoot film in part because I enjoy going into the darkroom and watching the image develope on the paper. With digital you point shoot and look at the image which never looks like what I pre-visualized..
With film you have to slow down and think..with digital you point shoot then delete..
 
I just don't have the same 'passion' for digital photography that I have for film cameras and enlargers etc.

With film, I understand all of the principles. I know how the image is recorded on the film and then transferred to a print. With digital, I haven't got a clue what's inside the camera or how the image is manipulated by Photoshop's programmers. IMHO if you don't have an understanding of how it all works, you don't have true control... The camera and computer are really in charge.

For me, digital has only replaced the Polaroid instant camera. Its great for quick results and sending images via the internet, but if you want a serious image, film is best.

Maybe I'm just a ludite, I still have a large collection of LP records and have no intention of 'upgrading' them to CD or mp3. I fail to see any benefits from doing so. Putting a record on a hifi turntable takes care and a 'passion' for the equipment and music. Plugging a USB memory card into a laptop doesn't.
 
In a sign of the times the B&H ad in the latest issue of Shutterbug magazine has only 1/3 page devoted to film prices. Adorama has none.

It will also be interesting to see what the new air travel restrictions do to film shooting. Checked film is ruined by baggage x-rays. Carry on is usually OK, but this may be disallowed with the new super paranoid regulations. This will leave exactly zero ways to travel with film.
 
Up to now I'm positive (pun intended) and intend to shoot lots of film next year in brazil.
It would be a shame if I can't use the cameras I like best on my holidays of a lifetime.

OTOH, my usual source of cheap film, Sensia 100 5 pack 14.99 Euro and Elitechrome 100 15.99 incl. development, will stop selling film at the end of this year but they'll honor the development vouchers until all sold film is expired, so I'll stock up for the carnival in december 🙂
 
I reread the thread, seems as if I missed most of the fun 🙂

Even that Brian Sweeney has a Tektronix Phaser dye sub printer, I've earned a living selling Tektronix printers in the 90's. Believe it or not, one of the usual complaints was the picture quality. It was too good!

Still have a Phaser 440 and 220 and some expired consumables in my cellar. I have a 220MB Syquest and media as well as a 1.3GB HP MO drive. When I think about it, we worked on 400MB tiffs with a 486/50 with 64MB of RAM and a 500MB harddisk 🙂

Bad old times!
 
robertdfeinman said:
In a sign of the times the B&H ad in the latest issue of Shutterbug magazine has only 1/3 page devoted to film prices. Adorama has none.

It will also be interesting to see what the new air travel restrictions do to film shooting. Checked film is ruined by baggage x-rays. Carry on is usually OK, but this may be disallowed with the new super paranoid regulations. This will leave exactly zero ways to travel with film.
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Flew up to visit a relative in Boston last night, and rather than risk having to check my Leica and have my film fogged if over the weekend something happens and they decide to prohibit carryons, I opted to bring my Canon 20D and "kit" lens in a Zing neoprene cover. As we were heading out of his apartment this morning I stopped for a last-minute bathroom break, and as I reached for the flusher the camera slipped off my shoulder and into the bowl. Yes, it was before I had flushed :bang: I cought the strap and had it out in a split-second and the Zing cover kept the camera dry, but I thought to myself that somehow the god of film was punishing me for my betrayal 😀
 
Why do I still use film? I'm sorry, I don't. However, I've recently started again with a FED and an Exakta in a desperate attempt to rediscover my youth. That is, whenever I can afford to process the occasional roll of film that I've been (un)fortunate enough to find in the local shop. It was easier for Proust, all he had to do was stay in bed and eat cake. I suspect all I've succeeded in doing is making people on e**y a little happier and shedding more gloom in the local bank.

You can point and shoot with any type of camera you like, and there is a very good thread going on about doing just that with RF in the street, to good effect. You can spend as much or as little time as you like or don't like when taking a picture, with any type of camera. The differences are with us, different people have different styles and different preferences and different dreams and different heroes. Whatever the mix, good pictures tumble out now and then. I've worked in a commercial darkroom and continued at home in my own for many years, abandoning it finally rather than invest in a necessary upgrade (and the family protested at the permanent whiff of acetic acid, and the government thought up some tough restrictions on what to do with spent chemicals). Life went on with transparencies. I was fascinated by Max Ferguson's Digital Darkroom Masterclass (Focal Press), comparing wet and digital techniques to reach the same end. And I was amazed at some of the things he could do in the wet darkroom while people only talk about digital wizardry. I see the image sensor as one more type of film, the rest is the same - same apertures, same shutter times, same exposure procedures, same composition principles, same crawling around on your hands and knees, same looking the other way to avoid someone's angry eye.

I haven't got round to posting any 21st century RF work yet as I've only just got my first films back, and they're mostly experiments to see if the shutter and exposure meter are working and in step and tests to check performance of lenses. And we have an agreement in the family not to post family pictures, ever since people started pointing out that googling the village name was picking up all sorts of titbits of our lives. If I can stay awake long enough I'll see if I can find something to post tonight.
 
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1. I'm a serial fiddler, and digital post-processing is addictive. With digital I spend more time processing than taking. I'd rather trust the look of the shot to (more or less) Agfa or Fuji or Ilford plus an experienced printer who knows what I want.

2. I work in IT, am a digital child as a result, and don't consider a digital shot to be real, or finished. Its never finished, you can always tweak something. I like the (relative) permanence of film

3. It has soul. I love the fact I have my Dad's slides from the 60s (along with the camera and lens that took them). I love that I have the exact chunk of film that was with him on the other side of the world. I love the fact I have the chunk of film that I used to take my first ever photograph 30-odd years ago. Sure its suffered a colour shift and will eventually fade to nothing. But its a direct physical connection to a time and place, the physical representation of the moment in its purest form, you can almost touch the photons...

I really can't see people getting so misty-eyed over an arrangement of 1s and 0s 40 years down the line. The sheer number of images being taken guarantees that in my mind...
 
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