Is shooting film still worth it in 2022 ?

[FrozenInTime]

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12 minutes ago, Steven said:

Not completely relevant, but a bit relevant none the less. 

I like Annie Lebovitz photography. I have a huge Tashen book of her best work in my leaving room. Most photos take on a medium format film, and some on medium format digital. She also shot some with a Nikon full frame digital camera, and they are beautiful. 

Last week, I saw on instagram her new Vogue campaign. A photoshoot of Olivia Wild in the desert. And I told myself, what happened to Lebovitz. These photos are disgusting. They look like they were shot and edited by an instagram influence from his rental villa in Bali. Really really awful rendering. WAY too digital. 

And then yesterday, still on instagram, I came across the behind the scenes of the photoshoot. She shot it with.... the devil! She shot Olivia Wilde with a Sony A74 🤮 And before you ask.. YES, IF SHE HAD THE TAKEN THE SAME PHOTO on an M10R or an SL2, I would have probably loved them. Story first of course. But don't come hang out on a gear forum to pretend that gear doesn't matter. Each camera, along with its process, has an influence on the final output. And some people are more or less sensitive to it. Like turbulences in a plane. I hate turbulences. 

Digital has also destroyed the photo monograph:

There are too many editors degrade photographers work by seeing images spread across a wide screen and then producing books with the image spanning the page fold. Making the book oversize compounds the issue.

IMHO nothing beats the classic beauty of images presented cleanly as single page plates with wide margins.

Edited December 18, 2021 by FrozenInTime

[Stevejack]

41 minutes ago, Nowhereman said:

"Runs around", really? This speaks for itself.
_______________________________________
Frog Leaping photobook and Instagram

Don’t take a turn of phrase as disrespect, it wasn’t intended that way. Aussie slang creeps in sometimes. 

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[Stevejack]

34 minutes ago, Steven said:

Not completely relevant, but a bit relevant none the less. 

I like Annie Lebovitz photography. I have a huge Tashen book of her best work in my leaving room. Most photos take on a medium format film, and some on medium format digital. She also shot some with a Nikon full frame digital camera, and they are beautiful. 

Last week, I saw on instagram her new Vogue campaign. A photoshoot of Olivia Wild in the desert. And I told myself, what happened to Lebovitz. These photos are disgusting. They look like they were shot and edited by an instagram influence from his rental villa in Bali. Really really awful rendering. WAY too digital. 

And then yesterday, still on instagram, I came across the behind the scenes of the photoshoot. She shot it with.... the devil! She shot Olivia Wilde with a Sony A74 🤮 And before you ask.. YES, IF SHE HAD THE TAKEN THE SAME PHOTO on an M10R or an SL2, I would have probably loved them. Story first of course. But don't come hang out on a gear forum to pretend that gear doesn't matter. Each camera, along with its process, has an influence on the final output. And some people are more or less sensitive to it. Like turbulences in a plane. I hate turbulences. 

Well put Steve - and for what it’s worth I’m with you all the way. I’m not sure yet if I’ll head back to film but every couple of years I do get the itch and end up talking myself out of it for one reason or another. For what it’s worth, reading your posts over on the film forums was a big motivator to start thinking about it seriously again because of all the reasons you describe. And my probing questions are all just part of that process of research / thinking. I really do appreciate the discussion and your thoughtful replies. 

[Herr Barnack]

On 12/15/2021 at 7:26 PM, oldwino said:

Here’s a nice thought or two on the subject. This guy is a pretty die-hard film shooter:

https://6x6portraits.wordpress.com/2021/12/14/waiting-and-wondering/#more-7727

 

Here is another essay from his website that resonates - even as we await the arrival of the latest wonder camera from Wetzlar:  https://6x6portraits.wordpress.com/2021/12/16/new-to-photography-a-film-leica-is-all-you-need/

[Guest Nowhereman]

13 minutes ago, Steven said:

I like Annie Lebovitz photography...And then yesterday, still on instagram, I came across the behind the scenes of the photoshoot. She shot it with.... the devil! She shot Olivia Wilde with a Sony A74...

I don't have your fondness for Annie Leibovitz. Haven't seen her work for two decades but, in 2000, I saw her "Women" exhibition of 70 large photographs at the Corcoran in Washington, DC — where she had the misfortune of exhibiting across the hall from a retrospective exhibition (130 photographs) by the great portraitist, Arnold Newman.

A Washington Post article  discusses mainly the famous Newman portrait of Igor Stravinsky and concludes: And if the other 130 photographs in this show do not all measure up to the Stravinsky portrait, the vast majority of them do and make a compelling counterpoint to the uneven Annie Leibovitz show across the hall. 

I didn't like the Leibovitz exhibition, and felt it was blown away by Newman's retrospective.  In a 2000 New York Times review, critic Vicki Goldberg stated: 

Ms. Leibovitz is probably the most popular portraitist in America...Her compendium of women is mixed in approach and results, some portraits being robust, some pointed and some lovely, while others, not surprisingly, are less compelling. The message seems to be that women today work in diverse fields and achieve on diverse levels, sometimes way up there...All in all, relatively cheerful news, but not exactly banner headlines. What is news is the color, which is ravishing, and the print process, which is computerized...Made from traditional photographs, these pictures have been scanned into a computer, color-corrected, then printed on watercolor paper by an Iris (that's the brand name) ink-jet printer. Ink-jet printers print not by chemical means on a photographic emulsion but by laying down ink from hundreds of tiny nozzles per square inch. These pictures are then pieced together from two or four prints -- seams are visible from a short distance -- mounted and displayed without the interference of glass...Because many of the photographs are grainy when so enlarged, the color breaks up; up close, tiny, wavering areas of pink or blue or both exist within one tone. The result is soft and impressionistic, more like an autochrome from the early part of the century than color photographs today. No reproduction could do them justice...Iris prints are showing up in more and more galleries lately. They are probably more newsworthy, as it happens, than most groups of women you can name.
_______________________________________
Frog Leaping photobook and Instagram

[Steven]

The magic of film.... 

(250% crop of a cinestill 50D shot at sunset, with dozens of sunstars instead of blown highlights)

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Edited December 19, 2021 by Steven

[malligator]

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On 12/17/2021 at 4:51 PM, Stevejack said:

...snip...

Film, it seems to me, is very akin to choosing a digital profile in lightroom. The chemicals on film react in a certain way to the light, and you get a certain look, but that look is largely pre-determined and taken out of your hands (other than some intentional tweaking in the developing process). I guess it feels a little like shooting in jpeg rather than raw - you need to choose the look before you load the film, and then you need to work with it. Nothing wrong with working within constraints, but it is limiting all the same. If I loved the tinkering with the developing process and spending time in the darkroom,  I'm sure I would have a completely different view on this.

...snip...

 

 

 

Not '"constrained". Considered. Not "pre-determined". Pre-visualized. Not "tinkering". Creating.

Edited December 19, 2021 by malligator

[Steven]

So I made it back from Cuba to Miami with my film rolls safe. 0 scans along the way. The four times I asked for hand inspection, it was granted to me without any resistance. 

Travelling with film on a difficult route (Miami -> Cuba, round trip, at the most complicated time, too, probably), was the easiest thing. In that regard, I can say film is worth it. 

During my three day and three night (solo photo) trip, I also managed to control my itchy fingers, and I only shot 71 rolls of film 😄 44 rolls of 135mm, and 27 rolls of medium format. All Portra, except for a few cinestill 800 at night. In terms of costs, it was around 1,100 euros for the film, and it will cost around 900 for the dev, so a total of roughly 2K euros. Is it worth it ? I'll have to wait to see the photos to tell! But the process was absolutely worth it, and couldn't have been happier with my decision to go with one camera, one lens (which is what I always do) and no memory card or charge (which is a first for me). 

Edited December 19, 2021 by Steven

[ianman]

2 hours ago, Steven said:

my decision to go with one camera, one lens

Surely at least 2 cameras? 🧐

[Steven]

1 minute ago, ianman said:

Surely at least 2 cameras? 🧐

2 MPs 😂 which I consider as one camera. I brought a second body for back up, as I have a habit of breaking stuff. 
And I was actually right, since I broke one of my MP on the second day in Cuba 😆 

Edited December 20, 2021 by Steven

[Steven]

And if course  I had my mamiya 7ii with me. But that was just for the medium format stuff. It’s a different story. 

[Steven]

Well, I guess my statement of one camera one lens just turned into three cameras and two lenses. Damn it ! 

[ianman]

So 3 then! Unless you shove medium format into an MP 🤪

edit: I’m slower than you at this time!

Edited December 20, 2021 by ianman

[Steven]

1 leica camera 1 leica lens. There !

[ianman]

Ok ok we get it now 😂

so what happened to your MP, nothing too bad I hope!

[Steven]

Just now, ianman said:

Ok ok we get it now 😂

so what happened to your MP, nothing too bad I hope!

Used the shutter dial too much, so much that my finger was all red. 
On the second evening, it fell on the Malecon. I heard the dial fall so I found it and pick it up, but I could never find the screw of course. Nothing to worry about, but it still got my camera stuck at 1/1000th of a second. Could have ruined my trip if i didn’t have a backup. 

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[Stevejack]

I got to talking to a neighbour about photography and film and she has now dropped off her father's old Leica IIIa and asked me to run some film through it. It's a 1938 build with a Summar 50mm f/2 attached. Both camera and lens have seen much better days, and it hasn't been shot since her father died around 30 years ago, but was previously in regular use. The shutter speeds seem like they may be at least in the ballpark so I said I would run a roll of Tri-X through it and see how it goes. She has an album of his street photography in the 1940s and also of her and her sisters growing up, all taken with the IIIa. I'll make one last portrait of my neighbour with her father's old camera, as she is now (much older than he ever was), and give it to her when I hand back the camera.

I also ordered a recently overhauled M3 to really give film another go. Not to replace digital, but to make some very specific photographs of family members and a few other small projects. Probably one or two rolls / month.

Thanks for the earlier discussion gents, all your points were well noted and if I came across as film-negative at all please excuse that as ignorance and probing curiosity.

[Steven]

1 minute ago, Stevejack said:

I got to talking to a neighbour about photography and film and she has now dropped off her father's old Leica IIIa and asked me to run some film through it. It's a 1938 build with a Summar 50mm f/2 attached. Both camera and lens have seen much better days, and it hasn't been shot since her father died around 30 years ago, but was previously in regular use. The shutter speeds seem like they may be at least in the ballpark so I said I would run a roll of Tri-X through it and see how it goes. She has an album of his street photography in the 1940s and also of her and her sisters growing up, all taken with the IIIa. I'll make one last portrait of my neighbour with her father's old camera, as she is now (much older than he ever was), and give it to her when I hand back the camera.

I also ordered a recently overhauled M3 to really give film another go. Not to replace digital, but to make some very specific photographs of family members and a few other small projects. Probably one or two rolls / month.

Thanks for the earlier discussion gents, all your points were well noted and if I came across as film-negative at all please excuse that as ignorance and probing curiosity.

You’re going to love it. You will never regret this. 

[ianman]

17 minutes ago, Steven said:

On the second evening, it fell on the Malecon. I heard the dial fall so I found it and pick it up, but I could never find the screw of course. Nothing to worry about, but it still got my camera stuck at 1/1000th of a second. Could have ruined my trip if i didn’t have a backup.

I always thought you had a screw loose 🤪😂. I’m glad it’s not too serious!

ps. You know people here are now going to forensically study your thumb to see if it’s the same one shown holding an M11 😂

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[Steven]

1 minute ago, ianman said:

I always thought you had a screw loose 🤪😂. I’m glad it’s not too serious!

ps. You know people here are now going to forensically study your thumb to see if it’s the same one shown holding an M11 😂

😂