Erwin Puts' Latest Blog on "Celluloid" - Film vs Digital

[plasticman]

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I find pretty much everything about shooting digitally to be faster and better.

 

This is a big surprise to me Alan. The fact that you contribute so many posts to this specific subsection of the forum gave me the impression you preferred film.

[AlanG]

This is a big surprise to me Alan. The fact that you contribute so many posts to this specific subsection of the forum gave me the impression you preferred film.

 

Film has its place but I don't find it faster or better. That's all. FYI, I started shooting, developing and enlarging at age 12 in 1964. And I have learned a lot about it over the years.

Edited April 3, 2015 by AlanG

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[pico]

Film has its place but I don't find it faster or better. That's all. FYI, I started shooting, developing and enlarging at age 12 in 1964. And I have learned a lot about it over the years.

 

I may have mentioned this before, but it leads to a new question about 35mm. I have for fifty years developed 35mm B&W four rolls, sometimes 8 rolls at once in inversion tanks. It is a bore. I hate it, especially since I adopted continuous agitation using a drum over a motor drive - but for large format.

 

My question is, Would people be more likely to process their own B&W if a method less tedious than using an inversion tank were made more affordable than the overpriced JOBO system?

[gberger]

pico, IMO, it depends on the space available to do the processing - - - and then to the space available to dry the negatives free of spots and lint. For drying, there may be HVAC issues.

That's why my son quit, viz., no decent available space.

[KM-25]

I may have mentioned this before, but it leads to a new question about 35mm. I have for fifty years developed 35mm B&W four rolls, sometimes 8 rolls at once in inversion tanks. It is a bore. I hate it, especially since I adopted continuous agitation using a drum over a motor drive - but for large format.

 

My question is, Would people be more likely to process their own B&W if a method less tedious than using an inversion tank were made more affordable than the overpriced JOBO system?

 

My Jobo system was fairly inexpensive other than the three 3010 expert drums for 4x5 and two 3063 drums for 20x24 prints. But I never do 35mm or 120 in rotary because I love the hands on of using tanks and reels, it just feels great and I have been doing it for decades.

[Jeff S]

I owned a JOBO, yet invariably still used old fashioned reels and tanks for development…35mm, medium and large format…despite never liking it. Go figure. I think it had something to do with the overall hands on flow leading to enlarging and printing, which I considered essential to the process. And that led to the whole darkroom environment…something I long experienced but won't repeat.

 

Jeff

[plasticman]

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I started shooting, developing and enlarging at age 12 in 1964. And I have learned a lot about it over the years.

 

That's great Alan. I think it's important with all the youthful enthusiasm bubbling around film these days, and the hands-on excitement of people used to (and jaded by) the 'simulacrum' of a constant virtual existence lived online, that we get the unremitting negative feedback of someone like you who experienced film for so long that digital is still new and exciting in comparison.

 

There's also so much creative energy around the film process that I personally find it refreshing to get an entirely different perspective from someone like you shooting interiors with a digital camera on a tripod tethered to a computer.

 

I also aspire to gain enough experience in some field so that in later years I can be a discouraging check to a younger crowd who might be letting their eagerness and passion for the subject run away with them. So thanks again for your untiring commitment to the film forum.

[AlanG]

That's great Alan. I think it's important with all the youthful enthusiasm bubbling around film these days, and the hands-on excitement of people used to (and jaded by) the 'simulacrum' of a constant virtual existence lived online, that we get the unremitting negative feedback of someone like you who experienced film for so long that digital is still new and exciting in comparison.

 

There's also so much creative energy around the film process that I personally find it refreshing to get an entirely different perspective from someone like you shooting interiors with a digital camera on a tripod tethered to a computer.

 

I also aspire to gain enough experience in some field so that in later years I can be a discouraging check to a younger crowd who might be letting their eagerness and passion for the subject run away with them. So thanks again for your untiring commitment to the film forum.

 

You're welcome to you opinion as always.

 

Sorry, but Puts just sounds like B.S. in this piece. That's all.

Edited April 4, 2015 by AlanG

[AlanG]

I may have mentioned this before, but it leads to a new question about 35mm. I have for fifty years developed 35mm B&W four rolls, sometimes 8 rolls at once in inversion tanks. It is a bore. I hate it, especially since I adopted continuous agitation using a drum over a motor drive - but for large format.

 

My question is, Would people be more likely to process their own B&W if a method less tedious than using an inversion tank were made more affordable than the overpriced JOBO system?

 

Cheap motorized rollers for small sealed tanks were available a long time ago. I had a Merz system that was like a double Jobo on steroids. It could do about twenty rolls at a time but I mostly used it for Cibachrome.