5 Reasons to Shoot Film -- Popular Photograghy Article

Al Denelsbeck wrote:
Hmmmm, bodies and batteries and cards and harddrives, Bret, how much
have you spent in the past five years? I've spent $600 on bodies, and about
$950 on film, processing, batteries, and slide sleeves. And that's
excluding the film that my clients paid for.

$950 in 5 years? What do you shoot, like 12 rolls a year?
When I was shooting film exclusively I had to buy the film (usually
+$5/roll for the good stuff).
Then I'd spend more money having it processed (about $8/roll with
slides).
And how many keepers do you get out of each roll?
I don't know how many images I've taken with digital, probably over a
couple hundred thousand or so. Figure up what that would cost ya with
film.
-------------------------------

But you know? The digital soccer fans are starting to get really
obnoxious. Are you happy with your camera? Good. I'm happy with mine. ****
off and try the insecure braying on someone that cares.

Or even better, come to the startling realization that you don't have
all the magical answers for everyone else.

Sheesh. Hope you got a life for christmas...

Wow, such hostility you luddites possess! I wonder what it is that
makes you so bitter?

But go ahead, knock yourself out attacking me even as the world around
you switches to digital. We could give a **** what you shoot with.
Stick with your Kodak Brownie for all I care. Drive your ****in Edsel.
Play your 45's. And that leisure suit still looks great on you.
Maybe if you switched to digital your attitude would improve and your
pics wouldn't all suck so badly?

jeremy wrote:
"That_Rich" wrote in message
...

I have no real preference over film and digital, I just happen to use
film because my investment over the last thirty years in film
equipment must be figured into the equation. To replace all I've
amassed with digital would be silly at this point. When full frame
digital becomes reasonable for a weekend shooter, then I'll make my
move.




Amen! I've been wondering what ever has happened to all those guys that
were buying film equipment all those years. It couldn't ALL have ended up
on eBay . . .

The way I see it, the acquisition of my film scanner has, in a sense, turned
all of my film cameras into digital cameras.


I agree with Jeremy. I have 20+ K-bayonet lenses and half a dozen bodies
and have no intention of going digital. Four reasons: 1) I have a very
good film scanner so I do not need digital capture 2) I dont like crop
factor and want to keep my 50 mm a 50 mm and my 24 mm a 24 mm. 3) This
is strictly personal: I want to have a physical image (slide or neg),
not just ones and zeroes. 4) I never shoot above ISO 100 anyway.
Well, and maybe number 5) "If it aint broke dont fix it". I am happy
with the equipment and workflow I have now, going digital would not make
me a better photographer.

Väinö Louekari

Väinö Louekari wrote:
I am happy
with the equipment and workflow I have now, going digital would not make
me a better photographer.


No, but it might allow you to get better pics and lots more of them.

Annika1980 wrote:
Väinö Louekari wrote:

I am happy
with the equipment and workflow I have now, going digital would not make
me a better photographer.



No, but it might allow you to get better pics and lots more of them.

Please, do tell me just how?

Väinö Louekari

Väinö Louekari wrote:

I agree with Jeremy. I have 20+ K-bayonet lenses and half a dozen bodies
and have no intention of going digital. Four reasons: 1) I have a very
good film scanner so I do not need digital capture 2) I dont like crop
factor and want to keep my 50 mm a 50 mm and my 24 mm a 24 mm. 3) This
is strictly personal: I want to have a physical image (slide or neg),
not just ones and zeroes. 4) I never shoot above ISO 100 anyway.
Well, and maybe number 5) "If it aint broke dont fix it". I am happy
with the equipment and workflow I have now, going digital would not make
me a better photographer.

Ok I am with you on the crop factor sometimes being a pain, but as for
not shooting above ISO 100 you don't know what you are missing. When I
shoot film I never shoot above ISO 100 if I could at all avoid it, I
don't like noise in my photos. But being able to crank the ISO up to
1600 and shoot in low light with available light has given me photos I
could never have gotten before.

The high ISO setting are also handy if you are shooting with a long
lens hand held, nothing like getting the shutter speed up.

No digital will not make you a better photographer, but you might get
better photos and for many of us that is well worth it.

Scott

Scott W wrote:
Väinö Louekari wrote:


I agree with Jeremy. I have 20+ K-bayonet lenses and half a dozen bodies
and have no intention of going digital. Four reasons: 1) I have a very
good film scanner so I do not need digital capture 2) I dont like crop
factor and want to keep my 50 mm a 50 mm and my 24 mm a 24 mm. 3) This
is strictly personal: I want to have a physical image (slide or neg),
not just ones and zeroes. 4) I never shoot above ISO 100 anyway.
Well, and maybe number 5) "If it aint broke dont fix it". I am happy
with the equipment and workflow I have now, going digital would not make
me a better photographer.


Ok I am with you on the crop factor sometimes being a pain, but as for
not shooting above ISO 100 you don't know what you are missing. When I
shoot film I never shoot above ISO 100 if I could at all avoid it, I
don't like noise in my photos. But being able to crank the ISO up to
1600 and shoot in low light with available light has given me photos I
could never have gotten before.

The high ISO setting are also handy if you are shooting with a long
lens hand held, nothing like getting the shutter speed up.

No digital will not make you a better photographer, but you might get
better photos and for many of us that is well worth it.

Scott

Worthwhile points, sure. As for high ISO, I often use a tripod and then
I really do not need high ISO. So I can shoot in low light even with low
ISO. Also, if necessary I can hand-hold a camera and a 50 mm lens at
shutter speeds in the area of 1/8 - 1/2 seconds and the image will be
reasonably sharp.
A tripod is a great thing to have.
So, bearing in mind that I scan my slides and b/w-negs and can do any
postprocessing I want in CS2, just tell me _how_ would digital get me
_better_ photos?
Mind you, I have nothing against digital capture. Nowadays quality is
good, it is cheap. Fine. To each one his/hers own. It just does not suit
me, that is all.

Väinö Louekari

"Väinö Louekari" wrote in message
...


I agree with Jeremy. I have 20+ K-bayonet lenses and half a dozen bodies
and have no intention of going digital. Four reasons: 1) I have a very
good film scanner so I do not need digital capture 2) I dont like crop
factor and want to keep my 50 mm a 50 mm and my 24 mm a 24 mm. 3) This is
strictly personal: I want to have a physical image (slide or neg), not
just ones and zeroes. 4) I never shoot above ISO 100 anyway.
Well, and maybe number 5) "If it aint broke dont fix it". I am happy with
the equipment and workflow I have now, going digital would not make me a
better photographer.


We should fine-tune this discussion just a bit. My preference for film
results only in my SHOOTING on film. I scan my film and the rest is
digital. I have never liked wet darkroom work, and I believe that the
digital darkroom offers me advantages in terms of control and REVERSABILITY
that I can't get from a wet darkroom.

So the only issue, at least for me, is the method of capture of the image,
not how that image is manipulated and printed post-shoot.

I shoot about a roll per week, so film cost is not an issue foe me.

I also do have a digital P&S (4 of them, actually) so I do have the
immediacy benefits of digital capture whenever I am inclined to shoot with a
digital camera.

But my first love has always been my 35mm SLRs, and I do not wish to stop
using those bodies and lenses. Period. Whatever advantage digital capture
might have to offer, I elect to decline them so that I can continue using
the equipment I feel most comfortable with, and which brings me not a little
gratification from working with it.

I'm not happy with having to take 2.5 hours scanning a roll of film, but it
happens usually only once weekly, so it is not that big of a deal. My local
pharmacy develops an entire roll in less than 20 minutes and returns the
uncut negatives to me while I wait, and they are open 24/7, so I get to see
my images promptly after having shot them.

Any time I want to take snapshots I always have my digital cameras. What is
strange to me is that so many posters have expressed the opinion that they
are somehow bound to shoot in either film or digital, but not both. Perhaps
someone with only a single body and one or two lenses might decide to
abandon film, rather than get a scanner. But there are tons of folks that
have acquired large kits of film gear over the past couple of decades, and
the sense that one gets here is that they have all dumped all that stuff.
Didn't their film cameras and lenses do superb work prior to the
introduction of DSLRs? Are they no longer able to do that same level of
superb work, now that a DSLR has been added to the list of owned equipment?

I am weary of the way that so many of these discussions end up as "Film vs.
Digital" arguments. And I am weary of how often complete strangers, who
know nothing about me or the kind of photographs that I love taking, will
imply that I must be a Luddite, just because I've CHOSEN to continue to do
my serious work on what they characterize as an obsolete and inferior
medium. They should all just give it a rest.

Perhaps people don't know how to place the exposure properly with
digital cameras, or perhaps the commonly used jpeg output clips
the image. Those who shoot digital will have to explain why they are
having problems.
--

Blown-out highlights seem to have become acceptable in digital photography.
If you take a look at the images at this site ...

http://cp.c-ij.com/english/photo/index.html

.... you'll notice a lack of detail in the highlights in many of the
pictures. Look at the white fur in the dog pictures. I don't think the
problem is with my monitor. I haven't tried printing them, though, and
perhaps there is detail that would print.

SW

Just to round things off, here are five reasons where digital cameras
are better than film cameras:

1. Able to retain good image quality at high ISO speeds, 800, 1600,
3200, where film is almost useless.

2. Able to recover from underexposure better than film

3. Able to change ISO speeds literally from shot to shot

4. Able to white-balance almost any lighting without filters.

5. Able to take large memory cards holding hundreds of shots, versus 36
max for film

And a few more ...

6. Instant playback of images, with histogram, for judging, and if
necessary, correcting difficult exposures

7. No reciprocity effects with very long or very short exposures

8. Requires no messy, polluting chemicals to develop the images

9. In cases where speed of producing images is paramount, digital is
practically instantaneous, no developing, drying, scanning or printing ...

I think I've made my point.


The author of the Pop Photo article did not say that digital has no
advantages. The point is that there are still good reasons to choose film
over digital depending on the subject and desired results.

SW

Väinö Louekari wrote:

Worthwhile points, sure. As for high ISO, I often use a tripod and then
I really do not need high ISO. So I can shoot in low light even with low
ISO. Also, if necessary I can hand-hold a camera and a 50 mm lens at
shutter speeds in the area of 1/8 - 1/2 seconds and the image will be
reasonably sharp.
A tripod is a great thing to have.
Yup tripods are good, but it is not normally camera motion that messes
up my low light shots as much as people moving. I normally shoot with
my 28mm f/2.8 lens in doors with low light and I find I can shoot with
very long shutter speeds, like ¼ second, unless people are moving even
a little bit..

So, bearing in mind that I scan my slides and b/w-negs and can do any
postprocessing I want in CS2, just tell me _how_ would digital get me
_better_ photos?
Well for starters often being able to shoot at higher ISOs means you
can shoot at larger f numbers, the difference between shooting at f/1.4
and f/2.8 can be huge. And whereas a lot of people don't like to
hear it one of the ways National Geographic gets the photos they do is
to shoot 300 to 400 rolls of film per article, more photos helps.
Often the shoots I end up treasuring the most 20 years later are not
the ones really liked at the time I took the photo. When I shoot film
I misses a lot of valuable (to me) photos simply because I was not
shooting enough. In fact going back over the photos if I had the last
25 years to do over again I would have shoot far more film then I did.

Being able to shoot at longer effective FL is a big one for many
photographers.

I find the dynamic range to be better with the digital and I get much
less noise in the shadows compared to when I was shooting film.

I also find that my prints look sharper when digital, not more detail
captured but sharper looking because of the lack of noise. I also
find that scanning print film is a bit of hit and miss when it comes to
colors. Slide film seems to be much easier to scan but the dynamic
range is so limited that it is hard to work with.

In the end it was the time needed to scan film that pushed use to go
all digital, and since we were using Canon SLRs the change to DSLRs was
pretty easy. I did have to pick up the 28mm lens to get back to having
the same FOV of my 50mm, but this was not an overly expensive lens.

And if you want both the detail and the low noise and mostly shoot with
a tripod you can always get this kind of photo with digital.

http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/72258285/original (warning this
is an 8.5 Mbyte file)

To put that in terms that someone shooting film would better understand
that is the same number of pixels you would get if you scanned 35 mm
film at 5400 ppi.

Mind you, I have nothing against digital capture. Nowadays quality is
good, it is cheap. Fine. To each one his/hers own. It just does not suit
me, that is all.

And if you like what you are getting with film that is great, but when
you get tired of scanning film there is always digital waiting for you.

Scott