Saturday, November 28, 2015

OK - we're back and it's another year - and we've gone back to shooting FILM! (gasp!)

I know, these year-to-year postings are really few and far between. But you know how it is, you get busy, have a lot of changes go on, work your regular job.....all of sudden a year has gone by and you feel like you're still in the same spot.

Well, that's not necessarily true - just been really busy and if I'm not moving upward and onward, at least you can say it's "lateral". But the big news for the new coming year is - I'm shooting film again! Why? Read on....



It seems if you look hard enough on the world wide web, you’ll come across a number of photographers who are declaring a return to film. What’s even cooler, is that there’s an entire generation of young kids now who have never shot film, interested in trying it out, too. So rather than this post be about why I did and why you should too, I’ll just post some thoughts, probably economic in nature, that nobody has really talked about yet.

When I started my photographic path some 20 years ago (wow), I cut my teeth on an old beat-up Nikon FM and three prime lenses. Of course, at the dawn of digital, I had to go that way, and I did. I discovered over time that, like computers, I was upgrading the cameras all the time because they’re basically light-gathering computers, and your photographic image files are only going to be as good as the computer that captures them. Heaven forbid you shot RAW, and then some years later that RAW file format is not supported. If you didn’t save it as some kind of generalized file format, like TIFF or (gasp) JPEG, that image was lost.



I also discovered that even moreso, I was upgrading computers, because massaging pixels is big business. And as the cameras cranked out more megapixels, the computers and software had to be able to keep up with the new demand. I’ve run into some friends who are shooting 4K video now, and they’re finding they need to upgrade to the latest and greatest computers to keep up with the input, or else the system just chokes and dies. Do not get me wrong - I like digital. I continue to use it for things like event photos, group photos, buddy portraits, when I have to turn around the product quickly. This is even more true for the people who work in the media, like news people. They definitely need to be able to get their stuff to the TV and papers in record time, so it’s good. But for me, I doubt I’ll ever need to work that fast, so this last year I’ve contemplated using film more, and I just took the leap and went back for all my project stuff and the keep me happy stuff. If someone requests film, I’ll do it, but I won’t push it on them. My two little DSLRs can handle whatever people want quickly.




I did some math, and when I added up upgrading cameras (always in pairs so I had a spare), and computers and software every two years or so (always sooner than planned) I was spending way more than had I shot projects on film, which could have been done with a camera bought and paid for ten years ago (at least), including film and developing. This was a bit depressing. And realizing the old argument about analog vs digital, from a quality standpoint, shooting digital was a compromise so I could get the pictures done rather quickly. But digital photographs are akin to .mp3’s in the sound world. They’re not the best you could get. But they are good enough for adverts and TV, and web blogs. Just like I don’t mind listening to some musical artists on my iPod in .mp3 form. But give me the Boston Philharmonic playing Holst’s The Planets, and I’m sorry, I have to pull the actual vinyl LP out for that to play on a turntable.

But I digress. Remember when I said the image file is only as good as the camera that took it? That’s really true. On the other hand, if you shot it on film, you have a permanent negative that you can scan over and over. Imagine having that negative and in ten years, you scanned it again with scanning technology of the day. Heck, today a really high-resolution scan at 4800 dpi renders a file in the hundreds of MEGABYTES. This trounces ALL digital cameras on the planet. What’s cooler, is many of the remaining labs throw in scanning to CD as part of the fee you pay for development, so you don’t even need to own your own scanner! Who knew? Of course, we pay more now for film developing (I use TheDarkroom.com mail-order services, which ends up being about $12 a roll). But it still ends up being cheaper in the long run.


And the other things that occur when I shoot film are so important: slowing down, thinking about what you want, making it happen, all before you bring the camera up to shoot the picture. With digital, I tended to spray and pray, meaning I’d over shoot and during the editing process keep the good ones (praying that I got good ones). But with digital, I was having to do that with hundreds of files!  I think I sat more at the computer than I was actually out shooting. That had to stop too. If I’m really thinking, it could take me a day to shoot 36 photographs, and editing is easy when you’re trying to make all 36 of them keepers in the first place. So I like that.

So to start, since I had Canon lenses, I acquired an EOS-1v body, and then an EOS-1n body. Both were in mint condition, tested and spec’d up by a qualified technician (Canon still works on the 1v, too) in Japan. Both were $1700 (up to $2000 if outfitted with add-ons) new when they were released (The 1n in the early 90s, and the 1v in 2000). This month, I got the 1n for $100, and the 1v for $250. Incredible. I’ll bet the original owners would cry if they saw how little their old cameras are selling for. The ones I got must’ve been owned by amateurs because they still look new - there are a lot of those cameras out there still working that just look like they been around the world in the back of a pickup truck, but they’re still shooting!



I always wanted to try medium format too, and I am this time around. I just picked up a Bronica SQ system, with two film backs, and two lenses - all for under $400! When that stuff was new just recently in 2007, you could spend $3000 for the camera, one film back, and one normal lens! I think if anyone wants to get in to using film, now is the time to get in. If more and more people use it, the used camera market may just dry up, and prices will go up because of the demand. But that would be a good thing.   Film costs would come down, and maybe more labs would open up (alot of them closed - heck, Sams Club and Costco no longer deal wit film at all, and they were the cheapest by far). With the resurgence continuing, I can only hope more and more people try analog photography. Then maybe there’d be less and less people on the internet talking about it and actually out and about in the sun, shooting!

There’s something to be said about the complete digital lifestyle, and it’s not all good. Thanks for reading!