Any M11 shooters get the itch to shoot film?

[TheEyesHaveIt]

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I blame Leica, but once you get in, you get pulled in deeper...

Love my M11 experience, have collected more lenses than I need, have never shot more in my life with any other system because I can take my M11 everywhere. And now I'm contemplating an MP or M6 to try out film (never shot film before). Ultimately, I'm going to just do the same thing with the images and I have various Lightroom film emulation presets, but there's something that's still drawing me to trying out a film camera.

Anybody shoot both digital and film? What makes you choose one or the other?

[newtoleica]

I shoot an M10-P and an M7. I use the M7 for B&W film which I develop and print myself at home. I enjoy printing in analogue (when I get the time), I've been doing it for 45 years.

To be honest if I wasn't going to print and only scan the film I wouldn't bother. Film emulation (silver effects pro etc) is so good nowadays that you might as well get the quicker workflow and wider ISO range of going straight to digital.

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[Al Brown]

I shoot a M10-R and M10-P and also M6 (big M logo), M4-P (70 years 1913-1983 edition) and M4-2 (Gold plated). I use analog Leicas for color print film which I scan myself at home. I do not print but only scan the film. I do bother. I publish my photos in international magazines, publish travel stories and also do online work (magazines & co.) plus occasional exhibition. The last one saw me print 70x100cm images.

Edited September 12 by Al Brown

[Photoworks]

Unless for the experience there is no point in shooting color film.

B&W can still be fun to print yourself.

I have been shooting Vision3 films Portra 400 and Cinestill 50, they all cost about $15/roll and $10/15 for processing.
I have done a few shots comparing with M11, you can get similar shots on digital, but not the same, very close.

CineStill is the exception as it is a film hit with lots of halation. DehanserPro can reproduce some of it, but that is a special case.

 

 

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[Leica Filmmatic]

I have a M11 and MP, depending on the day it depends on what I reach for.  I love then pure mechanicalness of the mp and I enjoy shooting film.  However if I know I am going to be late into the day I bring the M11.  I really enjoy shooting both and you probably will too.  

[thrid]

I love shooting film, but the recent price increases are hard to stomach.

Kodak Tri-X is now $14 a roll. That's manageable if you are only shooting the occasional roll, but I used to burn through anywhere between 2-3 bricks a month, when I was living in London and really working on my street photography. Given the current prices it would be cheaper to develop a serious drinking problem than shoot that much film.

Don't even get me started on color film.

My first move was to shift from Tri-X to Ilford HP5+, which currently runs about $8 a roll. It's a beautiful film, I've shot a lot of it over the years and Ilford is a great company.

Costs can be reduced by a not insignificant amount if you bulk load, but obviously that's less convenient than just dropping in a prepackaged roll.

Anyhow, at this point I'm split. I have an M10 and six M film bodies. plus LTM, Leica R and a few Nikons

The M10 is seeing a lot more use, but I would like to trade it in while it still has some value and move up to an M11. But the M11 is not exactly cheap and at this point two bodies for a big project is out of the question. Even used you're looking at close to $20,000 for a pair of M11

It's a little bit difficult to swallow the possibility that after nearly 30 years of shooting Leica LTM / M and R bodies that I may be forced to switch brands, simply because I have been priced out of the market. Leicas have never been cheap and I have purchased my share of new M and R bodies and lenses. But at this point I can get two Nikon 780 for less than half the cost of a single M11. Or go the Fuji route if they ever release the XPro-4. Do I want to do that? No. But making images is more important to me than brand loyalty.

Or I could simply keep shooting film for a big / important project and plink around with the M10 or whatever digital I have when speed etc is of essence.

Ilford sells a 100 roll pack of HP5+ for about 400 dollars. That's 40 bricks and well within my burn rate of how much film I have expended in the past on shooting a sizable project.

 

Aside from the visual beauty of film there are other advantages....

For starters there would be a visual continuity with my previous work which now goes back a few decades.

And of course there is the issue of archival stability. Film will outlast any digital storage media by a mile. There is also a certain peace of mind to working with film. Short of the building burning down those negatives will outlast any of us reading this thread.

I still think that film looks 'better' in bright sunlight, but there is zero doubt that digital wipes the floor with film in low light situations... Digital allows you to make low light pictures that would be impossible on film.

Ultimately it will be a hybrid approach. They both have their strengths and excluding one option would be short sighted.

 

 

Edited September 13 by thrid

[jakontil]

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Im using m 11 and still heavily shooting films, the good thing is, lenses are swappable so yeah why not?

[Jewl]

I am coming from a digital M (M10P, now M11) and added an analog M! 

I am trying to use both / compensate each other as for me, film is too expensive to solely rely on the medium! And, as I shoot a lot in challenging light situations, film often is also not working to achieve good results (do not want to use tripods etc.). 

[keeping_a_balance]

Shoot M11, and M6.  Just started with film a bit this year, getting the M6 (used) in July, frankly love it and hate it.  Mistakes are expensive in film, but you learn a lot and I really do love the results.  

[evikne]

I feel much the same way. I "only" have an M10 and have no experience with film. But my Leica has made me want to shoot real film even more. I love the look of film and enjoy browsing film threads in this forum. I use film emulation profiles, and my older Mandler lenses also give a more analog look.

But I feel pulled in two directions; I love the manual shooting experience, but I also like the convenience of a digital workflow, and it's much cheaper. I bought my M10 when it was just launched, but I regret not waiting and buying an M10-D instead, with an even more analog feel. Now they're almost impossible to find on the second-hand market. Perhaps an upcoming M11-D, or even an M12-D, will be even better. It depends on which direction Leica goes — more high-tech, or keeping it clean and simple, like a true analog camera, only with a digital sensor. I feel that the M11 is at a crossroads, which could lead development in either direction.

My financial situation at the moment means I can't experiment too much, so I'll have to wait a bit and see. Maybe I'll end up giving up digital photography and buying a real film camera.

[Greenhilltony]

Depending on how easy it is for you to get film in bulk rolls and developing kits, shooting film could be bankrupting or quite affordable. BW shooters must have known what they're going to do, and the chemicals for developing are rather easy to storage for a considerable time. I used to develop my BW film with the HC-110, which can be diluted to the working solution with very little amount of usage and just use it once. But I have fully turned to colours in digital and film, BW is not my way of seeing and contemplating. As you know color negatives have been rocket high in prices. I embraced the motion stocks of Kodak, especially the 500T. Based in China as I am, I can order 100 ft, 400 ft and 1000 ft bulk rolls of the motion picture stocks from a dealer. I just ordered one unit of 100 ft 500T, and bulk loaded it into 18 rolls. The cost averaged to 6 USD approximately. As for the developing kit, it averages 1-2 USD per roll (lower cost if developed at box speed, higher cost for push process because it consumes more chemicals in developing stage and needs more replenisher).

Though the 500T is a tungsten film, I have been getting consistently fine results shooting it in external daylight, internal artificial light, and various situations on streets at night without using any correction filter. The cast of cool colours of this film stock usually prevails in shadows and especially when incorrectly underexposed. Nonetheless, the color casting can be easily fixed and removed in scanning and post-processing. 

[thrid]

Correction:

The 50 pack of Ilford HP5+ is $447.00 at BHPhoto 

 

So, it's not 100 rolls for that price, but 50...

[Warton]

55 minutes ago, thrid said:

Correction:

The 50 pack of Ilford HP5+ is $447.00 at BHPhoto 

 

So, it's not 100 rolls for that price, but 50...

BH really has some funny pricing model.

447 for 50 rolls is same as 8.95 per roll. Why the heck do I want to buy 50 rolls at a time then?

[Olaf_ZG]

I don’t have a m11, but the m10m. Went back to film as well, but not with Leica, as I don’t see an advantage. I went medium format, cause this is in digital not really available for the money I have, and though great, gfx or x2d is not full size mf.

[Henners]

I have an M6 which I love and wouldn't part with, plus a load of film I need to shoot and have shot but need to processes. If I didn't have it, I'd still lust for it a lot but wouldn't actually bother purchasing as the romance of film is different to the reality in my personal experience. The cost and hassle of film, the airports forcing you to put it through the xray machines. The processing and costs of processing and time it takes etc... I was really lucky in that my M6 was handed down to me so for that reason I get to scratch the itch occasionally. I do love the look of film but digital can come so close now that for me it's just not worth it unfortunately. It might be different for you.

How about picking up a cheap old Canon film slr off eBay with a half decent lens and shoot a lot of rolls with that. If you find you really take to it and end up deep in the hassle that is film then you'll know for sure about laying down the cash for a spanky M6 or MP.

Edited September 13 by Henners

[sometimesmaybe]

On 9/13/2023 at 8:06 AM, TheEyesHaveIt said:

Anybody shoot both digital and film? What makes you choose one or the other?

I’ve only shot digital since I took up photography about 5 years ago. When I started, I had no focus and shot everything from landscapes to portraits.

I was also one of those people who thought having the ‘best’ gear made my work ‘better’. I jumped on the medium format bandwagon and started shooting with the GFX. Having now refined my photographic interest to portraits in urban spaces, I find my taste in gear might be ‘regressing’...

The m246 is my primary camera, but I still shoot colour with my GFX or m43. I find I can digitally emulate the feel of BNW with the m246, but I just wasn’t happy with my digital colour images (even after trying various film emulations).

I started shooting colour film about 2 to 3 months ago and shot about 12 rolls of consumer grade film like Gold, UltraMax and ColorPlus. I have to say, the colours and the feel of film just hits differently for me. Film has obvious limitations and cant replace the GFX, but on a bright day, I just love the look. 

2 images below – the BNW is digital film emulation and the other is ColorPlus shot at box speed

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[jgeenen]

I stopped shooting film 10 years ago. I then sold my trusty darkroom that had been an important criteria when choosing a new flat or house; finally I traded my M6 to fund the M11 upgrade.
 

Why? Yes, I admit, film gives a distinctive look and gives that thrill not to know the results until the film is back from development. On the other hand, can I afford to use my limited time on different technologies or isn‘t it better to master one technique instead? Can I justify the waste of resound pollution of water at times? 

As a result of that journey, I decided to concentrate on digital photography. The M system - bridging traditional manual photographic tooling into digital light recording - is the ideal tool for me to keep going.
 

Johannes

[TheEyesHaveIt]

On 9/12/2023 at 8:19 PM, Leica Filmmatic said:

I have a M11 and MP, depending on the day it depends on what I reach for.  I love then pure mechanicalness of the mp and I enjoy shooting film.  However if I know I am going to be late into the day I bring the M11.  I really enjoy shooting both and you probably will too.  

This resonates with me. Photography is my hobby and enjoyment is the chief criteria. I had never shot with an RF prior to my M11 and I’ve taken more photos this year that any other year I can recall. I’ve never shot film but I’ve met people who do and there’s a different photographic approach and type of enjoyment from that it seems, from taking shots with different film stocks, from developing, from scanning, from printing even. I don’t know if it’ll be for me until I try it.

So I did the only reasonable thing - and picked up a new BP MP.

[sometimesmaybe]

2 hours ago, TheEyesHaveIt said:

So I did the only reasonable thing - and picked up a new BP MP.

Ha! i fear i may also be heading in that direction (maybe a m4-p).

Im currently using a canon SLR (just to see if i like film) with the 35mm f1.4 L lens. It's a large system and too much to carry when I'm on location with all my m246 stuff plus my mobile lighting set up. the only sensible solution is for me to get a film M (but only after shooting my 12 rolls) 🤓   

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[marchyman]

On 9/13/2023 at 11:53 AM, Olaf_ZG said:

I went medium format

Me too.  I don't shoot film that often and use medium format when I do.  I've an RB67 w/90mm lens that is perfect to scratch my film itch.