New Leica M6 buyers remorse?

[madNbad]

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52 minutes ago, logan2z said:

If one is really devoted to shooting film then it's probably best to develop/scan at home.  The costs will be significantly lower.  If that's not possible or too much trouble then digital is probably a better option. 

I personally never understood the hybrid workflow used by many of today's film shooters.  If your images are never going to be printed in the darkroom and only shared online (or printed digitally) then why bother with film at all?  I'd hazard a guess that it is the hybrid shooters who quickly abandon film as they see few, if any, upsides to it given their workflow and the end goal for their photos.

Some have been film users for a lifetime and have never warmed up to the clinical look of digital. The cameras and lenses are bulky, heavy and expensive. A look at the run of recent Leica digitals has whatever is the latest and greatest replaced every two years. I just don't happen to have an extra eight grand lying around for a M11 which will be quickly superseded by the M11R followed by the M11P.

On to the darkroom part: Not everyone has a space for a darkroom or even a room they can make fully light tight. We live in a small house of 960 square feet. Our one bathroom has a skylight, our closets are shallow, filled with shelves and bypass doors. I can easily develop film but converting it to a positive takes some effort.

Our community darkroom closed a decade ago and if I did decide to add a space for a darkroom, permits and construction fees would exceed seventy thousand usd. I don't have a basement and the garage is already used to as a pantry, laundry room and even to park the car. This leave me with scanning.

In a post on another forum about scanning, a younger member mentioned that darkroom work was considered a separate skill and many of his peers weren't interested in learning. Scanning options are either a dedicated scanner, which is down to just the Plustek or trying to keep a twenty year old Nikon plugging along, flatbed, the Epson 850 has a lot of fans but is too large for the small room my wife and I share for both the computer and crafts. Finally, we have camera scanning. I started out with a battered Sony A5100, an adapted 55 Micro-Nikkor, a light pad and a Alzo copy stand. It was magnitudes faster than the Plustek, gave me good results and did't take up a lot of space. That has morphed into a Sony A7II with a FE90 2.8 Macro and a whole bunch of Negative Supply gear. I can scan a roll in about five minutes and if I have done my job by exposing correctly, about a half hour to convert the roll. I post to Flickr for the world to see as opposed the wet printing where it may have been seen by a few people. 

Even if I had the ability to wet print, it's a conundrum. Water is very expensive where I live and the thought of using gallons of potable water to wash a print seems wasteful. I enjoy using film, I like the look of film and I enjoy working with film. The hybrid workflow is just the next step for me to be able to both continue using film and have control over it's final look.

Edited August 19, 2023 by madNbad

[Anbaric]

6 hours ago, logan2z said:

If one is really devoted to shooting film then it's probably best to develop/scan at home.  The costs will be significantly lower.  If that's not possible or too much trouble then digital is probably a better option. 

I personally never understood the hybrid workflow used by many of today's film shooters.  If your images are never going to be printed in the darkroom and only shared online (or printed digitally) then why bother with film at all?  I'd hazard a guess that it is the hybrid shooters who quickly abandon film as they see few, if any, upsides to it given their workflow and the end goal for their photos.

I shoot more digital than film. But when I shoot film, I get a different look that's visible even on a screen after scanning. If it looked the same as digital there really would be no point, expect perhaps the fun of using a film camera. It's true for movies too - one of the nice things about seeing a digital HD version of one of your favourites originally shot on film is that you can see the texture and the grain more clearly than you could on DVD.

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[logan2z]

6 hours ago, madNbad said:

Some have been film users for a lifetime and have never warmed up to the clinical look of digital. The cameras and lenses are bulky, heavy and expensive. A look at the run of recent Leica digitals has whatever is the latest and greatest replaced every two years. I just don't happen to have an extra eight grand lying around for a M11 which will be quickly superseded by the M11R followed by the M11P.

On to the darkroom part: Not everyone has a space for a darkroom or even a room they can make fully light tight. We live in a small house of 960 square feet. Our one bathroom has a skylight, our closets are shallow, filled with shelves and bypass doors. I can easily develop film but converting it to a positive takes some effort.

Our community darkroom closed a decade ago and if I did decide to add a space for a darkroom, permits and construction fees would exceed seventy thousand usd. I don't have a basement and the garage is already used to as a pantry, laundry room and even to park the car. This leave me with scanning.

In a post on another forum about scanning, a younger member mentioned that darkroom work was considered a separate skill and many of his peers weren't interested in learning. Scanning options are either a dedicated scanner, which is down to just the Plustek or trying to keep a twenty year old Nikon plugging along, flatbed, the Epson 850 has a lot of fans but is too large for the small room my wife and I share for both the computer and crafts. Finally, we have camera scanning. I started out with a battered Sony A5100, an adapted 55 Micro-Nikkor, a light pad and a Alzo copy stand. It was magnitudes faster than the Plustek, gave me good results and did't take up a lot of space. That has morphed into a Sony A7II with a FE90 2.8 Macro and a whole bunch of Negative Supply gear. I can scan a roll in about five minutes and if I have done my job by exposing correctly, about a half hour to convert the roll. I post to Flickr for the world to see as opposed the wet printing where it may have been seen by a few people. 

Even if I had the ability to wet print, it's a conundrum. Water is very expensive where I live and the thought of using gallons of potable water to wash a print seems wasteful. I enjoy using film, I like the look of film and I enjoy working with film. The hybrid workflow is just the next step for me to be able to both continue using film and have control over it's final look.

Hard to argue with any of that. 

I'm fortunate to have a space that I can quickly turn into a darkroom in order to make wet prints. If I didn't I think I would probably shoot predominantly digital.  But I do enjoy the simplicity of film cameras and the mystery of not knowing what I captured until the film is developed, so perhaps I would ultimately choose to stick with film as you have.     

[madNbad]

It was the crummy result at exorbitant prices from the local lab that sent me down this path. I got tired of all my scans being dated 12/31/69.

I hadn’t developed film in decades and have learned a lot over the last several years, even learning to get good results from Tri-X developed in Rodinal. Digital capture and a lot of testing has gotten me to the point of very little manipulation of the converted image, treating the camera scan much like printing with an enlarger. 
Anything that keeps the manufacturer making film is good for all of us.

[CSG123]

9 hours ago, logan2z said:

If one is really devoted to shooting film then it's probably best to develop/scan at home.  The costs will be significantly lower.  If that's not possible or too much trouble then digital is probably a better option. 

I personally never understood the hybrid workflow used by many of today's film shooters.  If your images are never going to be printed in the darkroom and only shared online (or printed digitally) then why bother with film at all?  I'd hazard a guess that it is the hybrid shooters who quickly abandon film as they see few, if any, upsides to it given their workflow and the end goal for their photos.

I've come to that conclusion.  There's really no point to film anymore when you're scanning images and turning them into digital files.  It's ridiculous in my opinion.  It's why I shoot so little film now because other than developing it, anything I shoot is scanned.  I've got 30 rolls in the freezer and a recently CLA'd M4 (DAG) that I've had for 12-13 years now.  I love using the M4 but it's been idle for awhile and I can't get myself interested in using it these days.  I'm using my Fuji stuff all the time now.

[Leica Filmmatic]

Different strokes man, I shoot two rolls a month maybe 3 and I take them in to be processed every few months.  It costs about $120-130 to develop and scan 4 rolls.  Not cheap but it works for me.  I enjoy shooting film and it’s not realistic for me to develop it myself at this point.  My relationship to film makes sense to me and I think there are many ways for people to make shooting film work for them. 

[hansvons]

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14 hours ago, logan2z said:

I personally never understood the hybrid workflow used by many of today's film shooters.  If your images are never going to be printed in the darkroom and only shared online (or printed digitally) then why bother with film at all?  I'd hazard a guess that it is the hybrid shooters who quickly abandon film as they see few, if any, upsides to it given their workflow and the end goal for their photos.

 

In cinema, a hybrid workflow was the norm in the late nineties. In 1992, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first entirely digitally graded film. In advertising, TV commercials etc., shooting on 35mm negative and scanning the negative to video (telecine, D1 or DigiBeta) was the norm in the early 90ies until 2011. In that scanning process, most of the grading was done. One of the grading systems was Davinci Resolve, today the de-facto standard in the industry, but now as an app that runs on any Mac, Linux or Windows system. Today's raw converters are conceptually somewhat based on these systems and programs, most notably Discreet Inferno and Flame, the latter still in existence.

Many directors and DoPs still prefer to shoot on 35mm/65mm negative, like Spielberg, Tarantino, Nolan, and you can see it. In fact, 35mm undergoes a renaissance today. There's much more to it than the apparent extra step of using a film camera instead of shooting directly on digital. My kids and their friends spot the different look and love it. Yes, to a certain extent, you can replicate that look digitally; still, there's a difference, especially in the skin tones and in B&W. And shooting film focuses me much more. Out of 36 images, I get 20+ usable photos, and the quality is better across the board. 

I get that wet printing is a great experience, but a hybrid workflow is as good or even better from a creative point of view as you have more options.

Why do a few M6 2022 find their way back into the market? I don't know. My guess: people find out that shooting on negative means much more postproduction work and losing interest. Why do people sell their new Q3 or M11? The flirt turns into a disappointment when they hold their dearest wish in their hands. 

 

Edited August 20, 2023 by hansvons

[LocalHero1953]

15 hours ago, logan2z said:

I personally never understood the hybrid workflow used by many of today's film shooters.  If your images are never going to be printed in the darkroom and only shared online (or printed digitally) then why bother with film at all?  I'd hazard a guess that it is the hybrid shooters who quickly abandon film as they see few, if any, upsides to it given their workflow and the end goal for their photos.

I don't shoot film and scan for the joy of the mechanical process, but for the look. Film and digital sensors respond to light in a different way: different colour balances (red-blue), different tonal gradients (highlights), different grain/noise patterns. 

I acknowledge that wet printing in a darkroom would give me a different look again but, like others, I don't have the space that I can easily black out, nor do I wish to spend the money on an enlarger etc. A hybrid workflow gives me a look I like which is different from a purely digital look (that I also like). 

Why do you shoot film?

[Anbaric]

1 hour ago, hansvons said:

In cinema, a hybrid workflow was the norm in the late nineties.

Around then, it also became the norm in still photography. The Fuji Frontier, a minilab with a film scanner and a digital enlarger, was launched in 1996 and soon became ubiquitous. People were shooting hybrid without realising it. The quality of machine prints went up, partly because the operator could tweak your image before printing. Today, we can do the tweaking ourselves, and a good lab will send you a full-size scan from a Frontier or a Noritsu rather than the small jpegs they used to burn to CD at my local branch of Boots.

Edited August 20, 2023 by Anbaric

[logan2z]

1 hour ago, LocalHero1953 said:

Why do you shoot film?

I prefer the look of film to digital too, although I could probably get close with modern film simulations.  But I mostly shoot film and make darkroom prints because I much prefer the analogue workflow - the purity/simplicity of the image taking process and the creation of a physical image using my hands, rather than moving sliders in Photoshop and pressing the 'print button'.  A great excuse to unchain myself from the computer.  

[Huss]

14 hours ago, CSG123 said:

I've come to that conclusion.  There's really no point to film anymore when you're scanning images and turning them into digital files.  It's ridiculous in my opinion. 

Scanning a film image doesn't change from the fact that it is a film image.  Strange that people don't understand that.  Unless you lean into the digital post process of the film scan, it remains true to form.

Here is an example.  One shot of the same subject on film but scanned.  One on digital.  The film image looks like film. Ask yourself why people like Chris Nolan (Openheimer, Dunkirk etc), Tarantino etc shoot their movies on film?  The final result that is projected in the theater is a digital scan.  Is it because the film image looks different?  Of course, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.

Kodak Ektar vs M10r.  Same lens:

 

 

 

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[hansvons]

2 hours ago, Huss said:

Same lens:

 

Same time/light?

[logan2z]

3 minutes ago, hansvons said:

Same time/light?

I'd say no to both.  Looks like a bit of an overcast sky in the second shot as opposed to clear in the first shot.  I also see a touch-up of the paint on the stucco towards the bottom right corner of the building in the second shot 

Edited August 20, 2023 by logan2z

[Huss]

6 hours ago, hansvons said:

Same time/light?

No.  Same time, different day.

But do you really think there would be no difference between a film and digital image?  You really cannot tell the difference immediately? Really?

I'm not knocking digital images by any means.  It is just a different medium and I use both.  The difference in end result (and of course the process) is just very apparent.

Looping back to the question as to why people may be selling their new M6s...  people sell new/latest cameras all the time.  M11s, Nikon Z8s etc.  If you go looking for sales, you will find them.  I still think that w the M6, there was so much hype that people who are not actually interested in film photography got caught up in it.  The M6 was the "It Girl" so they had to have one.  Then they woke up to the harsh reality that the instant  gratification and convenience of digital was not there.

[CSG123]

10 hours ago, Huss said:

Scanning a film image doesn't change from the fact that it is a film image.  Strange that people don't understand that.  Unless you lean into the digital post process of the film scan, it remains true to form.

Here is an example.  One shot of the same subject on film but scanned.  One on digital.  The film image looks like film. Ask yourself why people like Chris Nolan (Openheimer, Dunkirk etc), Tarantino etc shoot their movies on film?  The final result that is projected in the theater is a digital scan.  Is it because the film image looks different?  Of course, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.

Kodak Ektar vs M10r.  Same lens:

 

 

 

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Sorry, Huss, not feeling it.  Other than the colors being off on both images, I don't see the "film" look you and some others see.  But it really doesn't matter much to me.  I've simply changed my thinking about shooting film vs. digital.  Love my M4 but use it rarely now.

[hillavoider]

On 8/19/2023 at 10:29 AM, logan2z said:

It's definitely become more expensive, but I'm not sure I'd go as far as eye watering - at least not for B&W film.  HP5+ at $8.99 is still not that bad IMO.  You can bulk roll it to get it down to about $6/roll.  Then there are films like Kentmere 400 for $6.50 a roll and others.  Develop it yourself for pennies a roll.

I certainly get more than $8 of enjoyment out of shooting a roll of film.  I shot 8 rolls this past weekend (which is a record for me) at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion in Carmel, CA and had a terrific time.  I could think of much worse ways to spend $70 over two days.

I always find it amusing when people come to the Leica forum to discuss their new $5K M6/M-A/MP and their $6K lenses and then balk at $6-$8 for a roll of film.  The cost of film is insignificant in comparison. 

 

shooting colour film can cost from 2-3 australian dollars a shot, its not going to stop me shooting film cos i like it, but i think even more about each shot now

[newtoleica]

I have an M7 and M10-P and use both. I use Tri-X in a pyro developer and bulk load. I both scan and darkroom print (and flat scan the prints). Digital I use Silver Effects Pro but don’t print digitally as I find it too costly and don’t have space for a decent A3+ printer. If I need a digital print I get it done commercially. 
I gave up shooting colour film this year as the results on digital were more consistent.

I could give up the darkroom and get a good printer instead, and I have thought about that as I get very little time to use the darkroom these days with work pressures. What stops me is the highlights… although manageable on digital most of the time the way B&W film and printing can manage them is far superior. For some subjects it makes all the difference. 

[69xchange]

Here’s a test, can you tell which photos are film or digital?

 

1)

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2)

[69xchange]

3)

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4)

Edited August 21, 2023 by 69xchange

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[pedaes]

CDS or CMOS sensor😀? And what about focus?