Shooting Film
Last month a few of us from Photowalking Utah put together a Film Shooter's Photowalk in Salt Lake City. The evening outing was both reminiscent and frustrating for me as a photographer. Since I have a long history shooting film it was nice to remember how it used to be. On the other hand though, it was frustrating to shoot within the limits of film - namely the lack of instant preview, fixed ISO and limited exposure count.
I came away from the evening with a simple realization: I'm okay with never shooting film again.
It is not only the three reasons I listed above that made me come to this conclusion. The advances in camera equipment and lenses with things such as viewfinder information, metering settings, weather sealing, etc. have made today's cameras a joy to use compared to their film counterparts of yesterday.
Today's image is one of my captures from the photowalk. The shot of Mike Calanan and his Yashica TLR was taken with a Mamiya 1000DTL. The fisheye effect was added with a magnification filter put onto the standard 50mm lens.
Mamiya 1000 DTL, Mamiya 50mm f/1.8 lens - Exposure Not Recorded
5 Comments:
I do agree with you somewhat, but what I miss about film is the time spent in the darkroom. There's something magical about printing with chemistry (although dust is a huge pain, even more so with film due to the lack of the clone tool!) But just handing over your film to someone behind a counter and paying ten bucks to get 24 photos back is no fun.
I will shoot film in the future, there's no doubt about it, but probably not until I have a "real" home with space for my own darkroom. :)
I don't believe it for one second! You're a closet film shooter, aren't you? And you probably have a secret darkroom setup in your basement or something.
It's funny, the things you mention as being a frustration are actually the things that draw me to film photography. I strut around with pride when I take out the cameras that don't even have batteries.
You have to admit though, viewing the world through the ground glass of a medium format camera is something special.
This is a great post and I agree with you.
I'm with you. This July will be the 3rd anniversary of the last time I exposed any film and worked in my darkroom. I was a reluctant convert at first, but now my only regret is that I didn't give digital a chance earlier. I still love my old, classic film cameras, but I don't miss film or the process.
Oddly enough this conversation very much reminds me of my first CD player. At that time I owned a massive Yamaha PX-3 linear tracking turntable with which I could spend hours tweaking to try and obtain the best possible sound.
My first CD player simply plugged in and turned on. The music sounded 100% better thanks to a far superior signal-to-noise ratio; no rumble, wow or flutter; etc.
But it wasn't the same. It wasn't fun with which to fiddle. Hell, you couldn't fiddle!
But I wouldn't go back to save my life. While it brings a smile to my face to fondly remember that beast, I'd rather have better sounding music.
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