wrote in message ...
After shooting mostly digital for years (and getting burnt out on my
photography) I am shifting gears and going back to shooting 120 film.
While obviously shooting digital is easier and cheaper, I'm just not
getting the results from my landscape photography like I used to. What
made me realize I want to start shooting film again was when I got some
proofs back from an old Ikoflex TLR I was given and had repaired. They had
a smooth tonal, 3D look I haven't seen in years!

I would argue that digital is not easier and cheaper, especially if you
consider your time to have value, and if you look at how quickly the digital
gear becomes out-dated. Every time I put a "new & improved" roll of film in
my camera, I'm upgrading the image sensor.
I just completed a modeling session with another photographer- actually I
was the gaffer on set, but I was shooting also. In the four hour shoot, he
ran through 4 memory cards; I shot two rolls of 24 exposure 35mm film. I'm
about to go into the darkroom to develope the negs (45min); he is going to
spend the next several hours eliminating the grossly bad shots (flash
misfires, model not ready, etc), then eliminating the shots that are
similar. Tomorrow, I'll spend about six hours printing the negs, he'll spend
twice that amount of time photo-shopping the images- removing stray hairs,
cloning out the light stand legs, etc. I made sure the model looked good and
there was nothing intruding on the set before I shot. In the end, we will
both have about the same number of 'keepers'.

It wasn't even a top shelf model (had the 3 element novar lens) but when
I saw the 5X5 proofs, I remember why I loved shooting medium format film.
I'm sure not gonna argue about why these images convinced me to clean up
my darkroom and go back to analog photography (including not scan and
print but optically printing again too) but there is something magical
about the look of an image from this medium to me. To be fair, I was never
happy with the results from 35mm film either..

I shoot 35mm, 6x6, 6x7, and 4x5". There is an obvious difference in optical
prints from each, but I think that below 16x20", it's difficult for most
people to tell the difference in film format for properly exposed negs. A
tripod can make a world of difference, especially in landscape work.
Many labs these days are scanning negs for printing. If your 5x5 proofs were
printed on a scan-to-print system (generally a minilab less than 10 years
old), make some optical prints and compare them- you may be in for another
pleasant suprize.

I also found it interesting the local camera store told me film sales has
picked up and some of the working pro's have gone back to film for some of
their projects. I'm sure this is the point where some of the die hard
digital guys will explain that "You just don't what your doing as digital
is far superiour".. To those people, I could care less if you or some web
site has all sorts of data to "prove it".. I know what I see and am going
back to shooting 120 film :-)

Stephanie