My Full Frame is Film - Page 3

RT_Panther · #21 March 15th, 2012, 05:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dcassat

While many of these are very good composition-wise, thank you for reminding me why I love my digital camera!

Okay since you put it out, I'll take the bait....

What is the "why" that you're referring to in your post

KS11 · #22 March 16th, 2012, 12:17 AM

half frame is not full frame eh.....but i just finished shooting a roll of 72 exposures from my Pen F....no need to worry about being frugal!

dcassat · #23 March 16th, 2012, 04:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RT_Panther

Okay since you put it out, I'll take the bait....

What is the "why" that you're referring to in your post

From the top:

Don't have to buy film

Can see results immediately

Can re-take pictures based on immediate results

On screen histogram, maximize exposure

The ability to optimize the shot on the fly

Processing my own photos

Optimizing my own photos

End results better than ANY SHOT I EVER TOOK WITH MY FILM SLR and consistenly so.

Pictures that will remain at their present quality (no fading!)

The ability to later crop and alter the existing photos without relying on someone else to do it and charge me for it.

Those are the ones off the top of my head.

But, I am considering jumping back in time and pulling out the old camera just for the experience of it. I do appreciate the zen quality of such experiences.

Dan

phigmov · #24 March 16th, 2012, 05:27 PM

>Don't have to buy film

Granted - its a hassle. The x-ray/airport thing is a PITA too. Having said that I love the fun in running with different film types and matching them to a shooting style. A lot of my favourites from the Street Shooting thread appear to be processed to resemble B&W film of varying graininess.

>Can see results immediately

Yup - definitely a plus. However, again, I like not worrying about achieving a perfect shot - I give up control of some factors and enjoy the 'wow' when the images come back and I managed a great shot by manually balancing the various factors (speed, focus, aperture) within my control.

>Can re-take pictures based on immediate results

Yup - definitely.

>On screen histogram, maximize exposure

Not really something I use on digital so I don't miss it.

>The ability to optimize the shot on the fly

Yup.

>Processing my own photos

You can do this with film. I don't, but other people do.

>Optimizing my own photos

Ditto. Its just a more laborious process with film - people have been dodging/burning/push/pulling exposures way before Photoshop.

>End results better than ANY SHOT I EVER TOOK WITH MY FILM SLR and >consistenly so.

I can only speak for myself, but my favourite pictures are a mix of film and digital. My fave film pictures tend to be more considered (due to some of the limitations you've already mentioned) and my digital ones tend to capture happy moments (no-flash low light celebrations) that more readily lend themselves to spontaneous shooting.

>Pictures that will remain at their present quality (no fading!)

I'd say the risk of data-loss over time means that quality is only preserved while the mechanism to read the data is available. I was *just* able to pull some old digital scans/quickcam pics off a 1998 Mac backup CD - I suspect anything I have left on 5 1/4" or 3.5" floppy is doomed. Actually when IDE and SCSI adaptors disappear I might be in some strife reading old disks too

This can be mitigated by moving your data (all of it) forward and not letting it stagnate (I'd argue backup to the cloud is also not a great place to store data if you need digital longevity).

We'll see if hard-drives of iPhoto and Lightroom libraries will appear in Antique stores and markets of the future the same way as old sepia prints and negs do today. I'm sure digital archeologists will be having fun in 50+ years time (great article on the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project here demonstrating the difficulties inherent in storage).

>The ability to later crop and alter the existing photos without relying on >someone else to do it and charge me for it.

True. I don't bother with prints - I get my negs scanned straight to CD so I tend to crop as required (tends to be the extent of my film-processing). I'm keeping an eye out for a dedicated film-scanner but they're still a bit pricey.

I always have the negatives so I can get prints or better res scans if required.

>But, I am considering jumping back in time and pulling out the old camera >just for the experience of it. I do appreciate the zen quality of such >experiences.

Its great fun. As a beginner, it has certainly helped me with my digital photography and the instant feedback of digital has helped my understanding of film photography.

As you can see I pretty much agree with everything you say.

On the other hand I recently bought a new stylus for my old record player and pulled out some 7" 45's - maybe I'm just a luddite at heart.

David A · #25 March 16th, 2012, 05:47 PM

Three of those reasons don't fly :-)

"Processing my own photos"—certainly possible with film

"Pictures that will remain at their present quality (no fading!)"—can do that with film and prints using archival processing and appropriate storage, at least for as long as your or my lifetimes.

"The ability to later crop and alter the existing photos without relying on someone else to do it and charge me for it."—You can do that if you do your own processing.

What I will give you, having done my own B&W development and printing years ago, is that processing my digital shots is a lot easier than it was processing 35 mm film.

I think the rest of your reasons are certainly valid, but they also don't mean that people are wrong to prefer film. The results are different and different people have different tastes, plus how you do things can be as important in a hobby as the result and some people find the process of shooting film and processing their images more enjoyable than doing the same thing digitally. To each his own.

I'm sticking with digital. The results I get with my E-P3 are more than good enough for me and I've come to appreciate convenience in many things. I'm prepared to accept some loss of quality for a useful gain in convenience. I find digital more convenient than film, I find M43 more convenient than a larger sensor camera system which would yield a higher image quality. At the end of the day I'm really happy with the results I'm getting, I know I'm not getting the ultimate that can be obtained from M43 with skilled processing so I can get better results yet with what I've got if that becomes important to me, and the size and weight of the M43 system and the ease of doing things on my computer are huge convenience factors for me, more than enough to outweigh any loss of image quality from what could theoretically be obtained with any "ultimate system".

So I'm not disagreeing with you overall, in fact I'm on your side overall. Just saying that 3 of your reasons don't hold. That still leaves a lot of others on your list as valid in my eyes.