Why do you use film:

Film, thats the emulsion on plastic stuff. I remember it. The darkroom is still set up,all 7 enlargers, safe lights, large format , various Focomats, trays. I never had to update any to keep working. Never sold any of the film cameras, all Leicas except for 4x5.

Went to mostly digital 6 years ago and thought it was cool. Still do. Have a couple full frame Nikons and some DX ones and a M8 so I can use all my old lenses. All the latest and greatest Nikor lenses and a newish 27" iMac ,i7, 16 GB ram, color calibrated screen, photoshop CS5.

Computer came with Snow Leoperd and I spent weeks setting it up chasing drivers from obscure websites so I could continue to use my Minolta 5400 scanner, a Kodak printer, Epson flatbed, and a few other devices. Now I am ready for the fun part.

Wrong! Lion OS comes along. Don`t need it as the new computer is for photos ONLY.
Wrong again! CS6 requires 64 bit Lion OS. OK I don`t mind $100 upgrade to Lion and I can use the disk for 3 computers. Here is the issue. The film scanner will not be supported by Minolta and I will be chasing drivers for the rest which I may or may not find. I just went thru all this 15 months ago.

Does Kodak make film 1 mm wider every year forcing new cameras ? Heck no. 4x5 is still 4x5. I can feed the Leicas 35 mm just like always.

Adobe will not support 32 bit on Mac so Adobe thinks they can force me to upgrade to Lion and then I get screwed by everything else. And they expect every new CS to be upgraded, OK so I resigned to to paying $200 every few years, but I`ll be dammed if I will buy a new computer, scanners, printer etc.

What do I get as a photographer for all this new OS stuff? Nothing. Just a bunch of trouble.

Digital photography is nothing but a money pit.
 
Charlie Lemay said:
Thanks for posting my website Timor,

I didn't post it here because just clicking on my name lets you choose to go to my web site. If you google my name, it comes up first as well.

Charlie
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Thank you Timor. I must admit I should have tried that myself before asking.

Charlie, I had a brief look at your website yesterday and bookmarked it to have a read later today.
 
Ronald M said:
Digital photography is nothing but a money pit.
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Well. I'd say film is more of a money pit. Sure you don't have to upgrade your digital kit every few years, however think of all that money spent on film/development/scanning.

I just bought 100 rolls of film. Close to $1000. This will last me a few months. So in a year using and spending all that on film and development, it certainly does make digital less of a money pit than film.
 
Jubb Jubb said:
Well, film kinda is the "real" thing. You can touch it, hold it, hold your neg/slide up to the light.. try doing that with your memory card. Whenever I shoot film, I always feel more involved in the photography process than what i do when shooting digital.
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I always thought it was the photos that mattered... generally speaking, people are going to look at the photo and not your process. That said, I can understand loving the wet darkroom. I did... but I also love the digital process as well. I just love photography in general.

Why would I want to hold my memory card up to the light? I can just chimp the images on my camera... 😉
 
Jubb Jubb said:
Well. I'd say film is more of a money pit. Sure you don't have to upgrade your digital kit every few years, however think of all that money spent on film/development/scanning.

I just bought 100 rolls of film. Close to $1000. This will last me a few months. So in a year using and spending all that on film and development, it certainly does make digital less of a money pit than film.
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Thats $10 a roll. That's nuts especially if you're buying in bulk.

Rolling my own bulk film costs me about $2.50 a roll for B&W on average. I understand that color may be more, but still...
 
Teuthida said:
Thats $10 a roll. That's nuts especially if you're buying in bulk.

Rolling my own bulk film costs me about $2.50 a roll for B&W on average. I understand that color may be more, but still...
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Have you seen how much a roll of Provia 400x in 35mm goes for these days? Over $10 everywhere you look.

Thankfully I shoot less than 50 rolls per year and try to use 100 speed slide film.
 
FrankS said:
Because its not as easy to build a digital camera with plywood. Duh!
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Ah yes, and I won't be able to pick up a digital camera with an obsolete sensor and duct-tape a bigger back and get a larger sensor camera in the end 😀

(In case that's not clear, I was describing my hacking a Polaroid Pathfinder 110 with a 4x5 back, got shots from it too, after taping shut the last light-leak, that is 🙂 ).
 
jsrockit said:
I always thought it was the photos that mattered... generally speaking, people are going to look at the photo and not your process.
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But different processes yield different results. Even if they can produce the same image in a technical sense, different operational sequences have divergent decision trees, and tend to yield different artistic results. Not better, necessarily, but different.

There are good and valid artistic reasons why people still do stone litho, linocuts, woodcuts, silkscreen, etchings, etc. Same goes for the various photographic approaches.
 
I was looking at some old photographs last year that my parents took when I was a child.
They looked great for all their flaws. It's like they'd aged like a quality piece of furniture or a good wine. Looking at the images made me want to pick up a film camera again. I've always wanted a rangefinder (having used a film SLR many years ago). So last year I bought an old M6 and a couple of lenses and have since derived great pleasure out of everything from inserting the film to thinking about the exposure, the composition, the light. Emotionally it felt great to create some kind of continuity, to follow in my father's footsteps as I capture images of my 15 month old son and record the places we've explored and the things we've enjoyed doing. Simple but valued moments in time, carefully and lovingly recorded on the Leica in the same way and for the same reasons that my father did before me. The whole process has been a rich one including the beautiful fine grained end product.
Film is special on many technical, artistic and emotional levels. I'm hooked again.

Digital has it's place as a precision tool and the immediacy of the results accelerate the learning curve for an amateur like myself. I still use digital, in fact I'm waiting to take delivery of a new digital camera tomorrow. But when I want to slow things down, savour the moment and create something meaningful (to me), I reach for my beautiful M6.

That's why I like film 🙂
 
Teuthida said:
Rolling my own bulk film costs me about $2.50 a roll for B&W on average. I understand that color may be more, but still...
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You haven't bought film in the past few years have you...
Kodak Ektachrome costs $10 per roll, and other neg films cost around $7.

BW sure, you can get it a lot cheaper. I have never seen a bulk deal around, anywhere. BH sell everything by the roll, which is where i get my film from.

Sure digital photography can be expensive with gear, but you aren't really paying for every single photo you take with the camera.
 
Martin Parr's recent blog entry titled The Facebook Problem... If you believe the numbers he quotes (and if I understand them correctly)... I calculate that if every frame of a 36 exposure roll is a keeper than we would be looking at 166.7 million rolls of film per month (500 million rolls at 12 good exposures of 120 format film).

Okay, I guess the pace of film and the price of excellent quality lenses and equipment. I found (by walking around) a factory Ai-ed Nikkor-H Auto 1:3.5 f=28mm for about USD 50... I enjoyed that find and the rolls of film exposed using it. In that same time I could have pumped out and uploaded a thousand or so dSLR images, but then we would be back to that old discussion (again...).

Casey
 
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I started out with film 14 years ago, learned how to develop and print, and now I just want to keep the technical side constant so that I can concentrate on the photograph. I also never thought there was anything wrong with film, so why should I switch? Constantly upgrading SW would frustrate me immensely. Even scanning pictures with a flatbed for the web is utterly boring. Mind you, I’m an amateur, so there’s no pressure to switch to digital.

May I also quote David Burnett from an interview at TOP:
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/03/burnett.html

“ Early July I was in Florida for the last of the Space Shuttle launches, and found myself on the same beach where, 42 years earlier, I'd photographed the departure of Apollo XI to the moon.
A few good pictures this time, but living in the age of TV/internet/twitter/Facebook, it all feels like it passes far too quickly. The velocity of photos and images that society has created and runs through on a daily basis means it's very difficult for a great image to stand out. It still happens, but I think we are all being deluged with imagery, and not enough time to appreciate them"

Food for thought…
 
Because I like it! Because it demands involvement to prepare the chemicals, carefully develop, cut, scan, etc. Because it's physical and I can touch the rolls, the negatives, the tank, etc.

That's just me. Others get much more artistical shots than I do with their digicams and have their fun that way. I have my fun with bulk loading, rewinding, developing, scanning, etc.
 
jsrockit said:
I always thought it was the photos that mattered... generally speaking, people are going to look at the photo and not your process. That said, I can understand loving the wet darkroom. I did... but I also love the digital process as well. I just love photography in general.

Why would I want to hold my memory card up to the light? I can just chimp the images on my camera... 😉
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If only the result and not the proces of getting there mattered it wouldn't be a hobby it would be work. You could also ask why bother carvin somthing or metalworking, sawing and grinding when CNC machines does it so much better
Best regards
 
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