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Why don't you just switch to digital?


seanbonner

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Shooting film is always exciting for me ever since getting my first camera in 1978 (Zenit EM made in USSR). Today, shooting film is just as exciting as it was then!!

 

"I don't get no satisfaction" from digital, it just always looks dead to me.

 

Maybe it's the "automation" of cameras that gets to me.

 

1st was motor drive to wind our film

2nd was 'A' and 'S' mode

3rd was 'P' mode

4th was Auto focus

Now the camera shows us the picture it just took for us.

What's next???

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I want to stock up on 4x5 black and white, but I have no more room in a 6 foot tall freezer...:-)

 

It is the same here. It is probably time to take Grandma out of the freezer.

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Now the camera shows us the picture it just took for us.

What's next???

 

The Nikon 1 J1 has this feature :-

 

Smart Photo Selector: always gets the best shot. Shoots 20 high-resolution images before and after you release the shutter, then saves your ‘best’ five for you to choose from. Images are recommended based on facial expression, composition and focus.

 

:eek:

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Now the camera shows us the picture it just took for us.

What's next???

 

What's here already is too much. There is a camera that only takes a picture when the subject smiles, and a 'party mode' for another camera so that pans and takes pictures at random intervals, auto-everything, of course. Face recognition is kind of creepy but an art student found it handy for shooting full-frontal nude torsal images.

 

Next will replace the 'beep' in sycophant feedback mode. "Nice capture" and all that.

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Anyone here has seen this interview with Robert Caldarone before? it's from 2009.. made a search in the forum and it doesn't show results. Quite an interesting read about film capabilities.

 

Chatting with an outspoken advocate of film photography: Robert Caldarone - photo.net

 

Film sees the world in much the same way our eyes do. There’s a resolution film has that you’ll never get in digital, its ability to capture subtlety

 

When you think about all the three-dimensionality which lies in the chemistry of film, and the way it can capture slightly different records of the same image within the ever-changing mosaic of its silver halide crystals there’s not a man-made chip now or in the future that could ever come close to what film offers today, yesterday, or in the future

 

At the moment I'm just a pre-beginner with film, as I just ordered yesterday a used film M camera to couple with my M9.. you'll hopefully see me soon at the "i love my MP" thread :) ..Im really looking forward to the film experience, and the reason I want to try it is because I really like the look of film photos, especially in b&w. There's something special in those photos, that one can try to imitate with a digital picture...and that's the point, I don't want to imitate, I want to keep faithful to the true nature of the medium I use.

 

Looking forward to keep learning. Having lots of fun on this forum :D

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I have shot digital since I started photography three years ago, but have come to personally feel that theres something "wrong" with the look and feel of digital. Film somehow seems "real" and authentic, and whilst I acknowledge that film can be manipulated after the shot is taken, it seems a more honest process than spending hours sat in front of a computer. Film is alive and tangible, whereas digital is hollow and cold.

 

On monday I'll part exchange my d3x for a 50mm leica lens, and when it eventually arrives, I'll order an MP. I had wondered if buying a secondhand m9 would help me to learn rangefinder focussing more quickly and make the transition from a dslr to a film M easier, but a member of this forum reminded me that the LCD screen on an M9 is low resolution, making accurate focus difficult to confirm, so I've decided against an m9 altogether. It will be a steep learning curve, but I'm ready for the challenge! Perhaps its an instinctive, rash decision made by my heart instead of my head, but life would be boring without such risks!

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The Nikon 1 J1 has this feature :-

 

Smart Photo Selector: always gets the best shot. Shoots 20 high-resolution images before and after you release the shutter, then saves your ‘best’ five for you to choose from. Images are recommended based on facial expression, composition and focus.

 

:eek:

Nice camera, but I'm holding out for the Nikon 1 J14 autonomous digital camera.

 

It will be a revolutionary camera - you open the door for it and it will go forth on its hydraulically actuated tripod legs to capture photographs of the genre you have preprogrammed into it (landscape, street, wildlife, architecture and so forth) .

 

When it returns and rings the doorbell, you simply let it in. It will then make its way to your computer where it will

connect itself, download the images it just captured, process them in Photoshop and print them to the preprogrammed print size you have selected. :D

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I have shot digital since I started photography three years ago, but have come to personally feel that theres something "wrong" with the look and feel of digital. Film somehow seems "real" and authentic, and whilst I acknowledge that film can be manipulated after the shot is taken, it seems a more honest process than spending hours sat in front of a computer.

 

You are speaking impressionistic bull-crap, things of which you know nothing.

 

Start developing your own film and sweating out the printing process in your own darkroom and come back to tell us how many hours it took you to make your final acceptable image which will almost certainly be manipulated in the darkroom to be acceptable. They all are.

.

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You are speaking impressionistic bull-crap, things of which you know nothing.

 

Start developing your own film and sweating out the printing process in your own darkroom and come back to tell us how many hours it took you to make your final acceptable image which will almost certainly be manipulated in the darkroom to be acceptable. They all are.

.

 

Thanks for your usual positive, supportive feedback, pico. Setting up my own darkroom is one of the reasons I'm moving to film.

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Thanks for your usual positive, supportive feedback, pico. Setting up my own darkroom is one of the reasons I'm moving to film.

 

Yes, but he has a point though.

 

Film may have differences which you find preferable to digital. But its certainly no more "real" in any objective or substantial sense.

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Yes, but he has a point though.

 

Film may have differences which you find preferable to digital. But its certainly no more "real" in any objective or substantial sense.

 

Well regardless of any subjective feeling about film, in fact you're totally wrong. A digital image file has no 'substantial' existence, which film certainly does physically have.

 

In some ways the physicality of film is an irrelevance, but as someone who's worked with digital media pretty much all my adult life, I genuinely see and appreciate the way that film differs in its organic chemical reaction to light from the way that a software algorithm interprets and interpolates the electrical charge from a tiny digital node surrounded mostly by silicon and other electronic materials.

The linear reaction of a sensor doesn't in any way resemble the human perception of light and dark, but film does this admirably well. And as far as I can tell, it was this sort of 'reality' that was intended.

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Well regardless of any subjective feeling about film, in fact you're totally wrong. A digital image file has no 'substantial' existence, which film certainly does physically have.

 

In some ways the physicality of film is an irrelevance, but as someone who's worked with digital media pretty much all my adult life, I genuinely see and appreciate the way that film differs in its organic chemical reaction to light from the way that a software algorithm interprets and interpolates the electrical charge from a tiny digital node surrounded mostly by silicon and other electronic materials.

The linear reaction of a sensor doesn't in any way resemble the human perception of light and dark, but film does this admirably well. And as far as I can tell, it was this sort of 'reality' that was intended.

 

I really don't think I agree, though i'm approaching the question slightly differently from you I suspect.

 

I think it depends on your starting point. I find both film and digital to be so enormously far removed from the way humans perceive reality that the differences between them (film and digital) are so slight as to be irrelevant in this context.

 

I can't argue about the physical existence of film compared with a digital file, but again, in terms of the thing that matters in photography, the photograph, I find this also irrelevant.

 

So whilst you may read the question of "reality" to be one of the physics or chemistry of the operation, I'm reading it in terms of the output, the effect on the photograph. That is how I interpreted the original comment about "reality". In this respect I maintain that there's no substantial difference in authenticity, though there may be very substantial aesthetic differences as well as differences in the process.

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My wife asked me that this morning, and it got me thinking, and I ended up writing an article about it which I thought I'd share here, assuming it might ring a bell with a few folks...

 

Why don’t you just go digital?

 

... because film photographers can concentrate to do nice pictures of her wife instead of wasting time searching the best camera preset, the best one from 164 possible autofocus points, the right focus difference point of these or of that digital lenses, crying always for better sensor technologies and bigger resolutions, comparing the (camera) body after some month with newer camera types and and ... All you need is to be prepared with a film in a Leica and a Summilux. Then photography will be love.

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Shooting film is always exciting for me ever since getting my first camera in 1978 (Zenit EM made in USSR). Today, shooting film is just as exciting as it was then!!

 

"I don't get no satisfaction" from digital, it just always looks dead to me.

 

Maybe it's the "automation" of cameras that gets to me.

 

1st was motor drive to wind our film

2nd was 'A' and 'S' mode

3rd was 'P' mode

4th was Auto focus

Now the camera shows us the picture it just took for us.

What's next???

 

Digital gives me all of the satisfaction of film and more. It never looks dead to me. It is a rich and rewarding medium limited only by a photographer's imagination and skill. I love the option of having automation ... doesn't mean I have to use it all of the time or ever. I don't have to grow my own food or cook every meal in order to enjoy food. I don't have to design and sew clothing in order to enjoy fashion. I don't have to hand-crank the car engine in order to enjoy driving. Photography has always been exciting and wonderful. Whether it happens on one material or another, or with more or less automation, has never really been the point for me.

 

About showing us the picture it just took for us ... this is a brilliant thing. For a century and a half, photography lagged behind other arts in giving instant feedback. Other artists could instantly see, hear or feel the results of their work. For the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the writer ... every brush stroke, every cut with the chisel, every note, every sentence. Digital photography has corrected the inability to instantly evaluate one's work, allowing photographers to do what other artists have always done. In this sense, digital has made photography less technological, and more like other and older forms of human creative experience.

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I do not claim that your position is not valid, for sure it is from your perspective. But the threadopener did not ask why you love digital. Your posting is an answer to a question that wasn't raised here. This thread is for film lovers who want to get feedback from people who enjoy film photography aswell. Nobody asked to get converted.

 

Regards,

Steve

 

Digital gives me all of the satisfaction of film and more. It never looks dead to me. It is a rich and rewarding medium limited only by a photographer's imagination and skill. I love the option of having automation ... doesn't mean I have to use it all of the time or ever. I don't have to grow my own food or cook every meal in order to enjoy food. I don't have to design and sew clothing in order to enjoy fashion. I don't have to hand-crank the car engine in order to enjoy driving. Photography has always been exciting and wonderful. Whether it happens on one material or another, or with more or less automation, has never really been the point for me.

 

About showing us the picture it just took for us ... this is a brilliant thing. For a century and a half, photography lagged behind other arts in giving instant feedback. Other artists could instantly see, hear or feel the results of their work. For the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the writer ... every brush stroke, every cut with the chisel, every note, every sentence. Digital photography has corrected the inability to instantly evaluate one's work, allowing photographers to do what other artists have always done. In this sense, digital has made photography less technological, and more like other and older forms of human creative experience.

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I do not claim that your position is not valid, for sure it is from your perspective. But the threadopener did not ask why you love digital. Your posting is an answer to a question that wasn't raised here. This thread is for film lovers who want to get feedback from people who enjoy film photography aswell. Nobody asked to get converted.

 

Regards,

Steve

 

But it would be a fairly sterile conversation if people weren't also able to provide a different personal perspective.

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But it would be a fairly sterile conversation if people weren't also able to provide a different personal perspective.

 

I doubt that film lovers need any further denigration on every single film thread by the same persons. There are times when speech is silver, silence is golden.

 

Regards,

Steve

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I doubt that film lovers need any further denigration on every single film thread by the same persons. There are times when speech is silver, silence is golden.

 

Regards,

Steve

 

I saw no denigration of anyone at all in the post to which you responded.

 

Perhaps you're responding to other posts I haven't seen, but this one seemed harmless enough and interesting.

 

Silence is often golden, but makes for a slow forum!

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In this sense, digital has made photography less technological, and more like other and older forms of human creative experience.

 

Sorry - this part made me really guffaw with laughter.

 

Anyway, the myth that instant feedback helps a person to learn is (at least partly) a chimaera. The amount of concentration and thought that's needed before committing to pressing the shutter on a film camera means that the lesson of composition and moment becomes deeply ingrained.

 

Instead of this, a digital user simply points the camera at everything often at random, and presses the shutter a thousand times without learning anything apart from how to delete whole groups of images at the same time.

 

So-called 'instant feedback' is overrated.

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