Why I'm still with film

Pistach,

Go to digital if you have to. It is still photography even if it is a different medium. If I painted, or maybe used pencils/charcoal for drawing and disease or injury prevented me from painting, I'd be happy to switch to photography to remain creative. That assumes I could find a way to work a camera. So, switching mediums while sticking to photography seems like a small price to pay.
 
Ansel said:
One word: prints.

If you print your work then analogue is still the very best game in town.
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Yes, if that is your final product which in my dreams it is. I have used 'true B&W paper' (silver halide print) from an online printer. And even though I have had some problems with them, when they are on, even a digital film scan printed using liquid chemical processing, it is great.
 
I really enjoy having a physical original of a timeless image, that negative, and looking through my archives every now and then.I would really dislike letting that go.
I love the coexistence of both media (film/digital) and being able to choose. While I am increasingly succesful with digital, the most timeless (that is subjective) images I seem to produce in the darkroom, still.
 
I not only enjoy using various film cameras, but it is the film 'feel and look' with all its grain, tonalities, colour palette, etc. The time between taking the latent image and actually see what came out (negative/positive or later scan) adds a bit of thrill.

And not to forget - darkroom. I only develop my BW films (and did some contact printing in the past) - it takes lot of time, but I so enjoy it.

I do outsource scanning as for me that is least enjoyable part.

When it comes to final (printed) image - it takes me mostly quite some time to get there- but it is very rewarding. I love the look. I know there are (undoubtedly very good) software packages that can render film pretty well, but for me it is just not the same.

With film photography feels more like 'doing' than just 'taking'
 
I developed twelve rolls of Fuji Pro 400H in my kitchen sink yesterday. It was a hell of a lot more fun than sitting at a computer and Photoshopping 432 digital files would have been.

My guess is that it was a lot faster, too.
 
I completely agree, 100%.

To be quite honest, if you were results driven only then digital really is the way to go. While some color stocks can't be replicated (or easily at least) digital is starting to bridge the gap. But, I remember creating work digitally and then important to PS and saying "this is just TOO easy". For people like us, the journey is as important as the destination. I'd rather have something flawed knowing I decided on every aspect of that image, developed, and hand printed myself than a clean digital file.

If anything, film made me step back and realize I'm not that great of a photographer!
 
noisycheese said:
I developed twelve rolls of Fuji Pro 400H in my kitchen sink yesterday. It was a hell of a lot more fun than sitting at a computer and Photoshopping 432 digital files would have been.

My guess is that it was a lot faster, too.
Click to expand...

Here, here!

Absolutely, nothing sucks more than just sitting at my slow computer waiting for CS to load. It's funny how people complain about the high cost of RF glass (especially Leica) but how about needing to spend 2 grand on a computer thats actually fast enough to run files from a D800. I have a friend who need like 13 gb of ram to just batch process his d800 files.

and THEN needing to spend another 2 grand in 3 years when the computer is obsolete.
 
DanielDuarte said:
...
Absolutely, nothing sucks more than just sitting at my slow computer waiting for CS to load. It's funny how people complain about the high cost of RF glass (especially Leica) but how about needing to spend 2 grand on a computer thats actually fast enough to run files from a D800. I have a friend who need like 13 gb of ram to just batch process his d800 files.

and THEN needing to spend another 2 grand in 3 years when the computer is obsolete.
Click to expand...

I consider the cost of a current, "high enough performance to do the job" computer just another one of the usual costs of doing photography. My current (a 2013 Mac mini with 2.6Ghz quad-core processor, 16G ram and 1T boot drive) cost me about a thousand dollars and will last me a couple of years. I don't count the cost of display, mouse, keyboard, and external drives since I've grandfathered those through the past three-four systems - they're all still working fine.

I spend more than double that per year on film when I'm shooting the Hasselblad or Polaroid cameras. And get far fewer photos out of the expenditure than I do out of my 10 year old Olympus E-1...

G
 
I like the film cameras (my dream camera was a Zeiss Ikon Zm), but dislike the whole process : developping, printing, scanning was really not for me.

Had I access to a good printer (ie a real artisan...) i might have stayed with film...
 
I think it's partly to do with the disappointment of 99.999% of the images from the monochrom that I've seen.ive not tried the camera myself but the chances of being in that 0.001% are ,frankly ,scarce.
The rest is a feeling that film is good and digital is bad,...a feeling that I can't seem to shake off.
 
Well for me there's no alternative. I'm just allergic to digital. Don't like the way it looks at all. It's plain and boring and somehow all images look the same. There's a plasticky quality to them which I dislike. Even where the photographer knows what s/he's doing the images will look really uninteresting to me.

I did give digital an honest chance with a 5D2 and several thousand images. It was the ability to vary the ISO per shot that was a big draw, if I recall, but in the end I discovered that all the gadgetry of a modern DSLR just meant that I was further removed from the image-making process. So I sold it to fund a Coolscan 9000. If I want to shoot EOS I can still use my trusty old 1N.

Someone mentioned the "quarantine" period between exposing a roll and seeing the images. I find that this is really a very good thing - even if I develop the b/w roll that same evening or next day - as it means that the passage of time will temper my expectations of how good I believe a particular image will be based on my feelings when I shot the frame. Very often I see the scan and go "meh, that sucks". Great for ego and learning curve.
 
I never really considered digital.

I appreciate and love using the different types older manual focus cameras that were clearly built to last a long time and are beautiful precision tools.

I enjoy processing and have been doing black and white film developing and printing for 40 years and have been doing color film developing and printing for the last 3 years. If you've done any developing and/or have some sense of working carefully with chemicals, the conventional wisdom that color processing is difficult, unsafe, expensive, and not worth it is wrong in my opinion. Except for a color head enlarger I do it without any special equipment (Jobo, etc.) and get great results. And I prefer the look of prints from film.

And sitting in front a computer for photography is not for me.

But I'm glad the alternative medium is available or those who find reasons such as easier, faster, more convenient, and dislike of processing relevant.
 
For me its a way of getting away from the computer. I work with computers and quite a few of my hobbies also involve computer time so its nice to have something analog to disconnect with. I also enjoy film cameras for their feel and simplicity and how it makes me approach picture taking in a different way when I don't get the instant feedback from a DSLR screen.
 
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