Pages: 1 ... 4 5 [6] 7   Go Down

Author Topic: Who's still shooting film?  (Read 51073 times)

FredBGG

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1630
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #100 on: December 23, 2012, 11:08:57 pm »

A friend of mine recently did a road trip along Route 66
and took an old Leica he bought at a yard sale.... his pictures came out really well.
Funny thing is he only took up photography a couple of weeks before going.
He shot Velvia because he bought a slide projector at the same yard sale.

16 year old kid. He also geo tagged all his shots with his cell phone. Oh these young hipsters... they have it all figured out.
Logged

TMARK

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1841
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #101 on: December 24, 2012, 10:51:51 am »

I like the drone of Velvet Underground when I process film. It's meditative in a way.

I reserve swamp pop for scanning!


Fred, that's almost as bad as smoking whilst you print!

I used to work in a darkroom of five of us, and all smoked. The poor girl who did the spotting used to get overtime. Cruel stuff or cool, depending on whether she needed the money.

The Polish chick has a nice video - the first one - and as for the last link to Burnside, I'm a sucker for blues.
But none of it, for me, is for working. For that, I prefer swamp pop rock or straight Chuck Berry. Music that's emotion and not message-based is better when your head has to be someplace else.

It's like driving: I often wonder if I even noticed the lights, but I guess I did or I wouldn't be writing this. When working, I seldom know which song I just heard, but am quite aware of the one playing.

Isn't photography something else?

http://youtu.be/3jLn1_shQXQ

Rob C


Logged

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #102 on: December 24, 2012, 12:36:08 pm »

I like the drone of Velvet Underground when I process film. It's meditative in a way.

I reserve swamp pop for scanning!





klrzfm.com is having to alternate my time slots with jazzradio.com which offers a wide range of jazz styles. It's also free, and that's encouraging! The guy who runs a local bar always has great music on, and when I thought to ask, turned out it was from jazzradio.com! I do wish they still had jukeboxes, though; there was something wonderfully sexy in the deep bass throb of a beautiful Bal Ami. Or maybe it was just the normal feeling of being young. Who can remember? Stupid Cupid, Sixteen Candles, Heartbreak Hotel, Rock Around The Clock, Long Tall Sally, Kokomo... them wuz the days.

I'll probably be doing some more scanning over the holidays - thank goodness my scanner wasn't broken, just being temperamental some weeks ago; I had imagined all my old trannies were now useless to me. Maybe that was an early visit from Santa?

;-)

Season's best to you .

Rob C


JV

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1013
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #103 on: December 25, 2012, 07:54:08 pm »

Oh these young hipsters... they have it all figured out.

Talking about hipsters, there was an article on Lomography in the Financial Times of July 2012.
According to that article Lomography sold 500,000 cameras and 2,000,000 rolls of film in 2011.  They have an annual growth rate of 30%.
I am not sure how significant this is in the whole scheme of things but the numbers struck me as being quite high...
Logged

SecondFocus

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 526
    • SecondFocus
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #104 on: December 25, 2012, 11:25:20 pm »

I had stopped in to the Lomography store in Los Angeles a few months back. It was the middle of the week and the end of the afternoon. The place was quite busy and people were definitely buying cameras and spending money.

Talking about hipsters, there was an article on Lomography in the Financial Times of July 2012.
According to that article Lomography sold 500,000 cameras and 2,000,000 rolls of film in 2011.  They have an annual growth rate of 30%.
I am not sure how significant this is in the whole scheme of things but the numbers struck me as being quite high...
Logged
Ian L. Sitren
[url=http://SecondFocus.co

VisualLifeLine

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 8
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #105 on: December 26, 2012, 02:09:03 am »

I think the main reason for the lifeless looking digital images is poor processing skill and the missing of taste of the majority of users.
The retouching of scanned negatives is at first a very technical one (dust bust, tweaking the white point etc....), while the retouching of a digital image has to be more creative right from the start and requires vision and skill to generate an image with comparable visual qualities as a scanned film image has it.
I believe, that it is possible to get the same organic look from digital with appropriate retouching as with film. Obviously comparing same negative and sensor formats. In my experience I get really close in matching files from my M9 to the scans from a M6 (with the same lenses). The cameras handle very identical, too. So for me this is not the point. The point is the process of loading film, developing, waiting and finally seeing the results. On the other hand with digital you press the button monitor the histogram and a little later you download the images from the card. Film feels magic and has so many more qualities in the handling. You actually do something with your hands, you touch, you smell, you interact a lot more, whereas digital is just pressing the shutter and doing digital retouching (which is also a process I love, but it's different).
The result is, that my emotional connection is so much stronger to the film image than to the digital. So that's the point. It's hard to say, wether this is good for my photography or not. I don't know. So far I can't recognize an distinctive difference in my imagery.

BUT: The thing changes, when you consider some larger format cameras. For example 6x7 or 6x6. The transition to the out of focus areas is something completely different. The rendering differs so greatly from everything else. The last months I retouched countless images taken on the P30+ and P65+. (It was my job in my practical term) If at all you can compare the dof, and out of focus rendering with 645. For myself I shoot also 6x7 and I think you can't get the look with digital cameras. Period.

I have to admit, I'm torn between digital and using film as well. I miss the emotional connection to the pictures and the feeling of doing something special, when pressing the shutter.
Furtheron I think it's good to cultivate the craft and keep a diversity in the age of Canon/Nikon/PhaseOne gear, where everybody uses the same few lenses, the same sensors/sensor sizes and every picture is rendered in the same way.



Best Regards,
Jan
« Last Edit: December 27, 2012, 01:42:09 am by VisualLifeLine »
Logged

ErikKaffehr

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 11311
    • Echophoto
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #106 on: December 26, 2012, 02:17:14 am »

Hi,

I don't want to argue, but once you are into digital, weather scanning film or shooting digital originals, you are into processing. I'm pretty sure that if you give the same image to 30 different photographers you come up with 30 different renditions.

Best regards
Erik


I think the main reason for the lifeless looking digital images is poor processing skill and the missing of taste of the majority of users.
The retouching of scanned negatives is at first a very technical one (dust bust, tweaking the white point etc....), while the retouching of a digital image has to be more creative right from the start and requires vision and skill to generate an image with comparable visual qualities as a scanned film image has it.
I believe, that it is possible to get the same organic look from digital with appropriate retouching as with film. Obviously comparing same negative and sensor formats. In my experience I get really close in matching files from my M9 to the scans from a M6 (with the same lenses). The cameras handle very identical, too. So for me this is not the point. The point is the process of loading film, developing, waiting and finally seeing the results. On the other hand with digital you press the button monitor the histogram and a little later you download the images from the card. Film feels magic and has so many more qualities in the handling. You actually do something with your hands, you touch, you smell, you interact a lot more, whereas digital is just pressing the shutter and doing digital retouching (which is also a process I love, but it's different).
The result is, that my emotional connection is so much stronger to the film image than to the digital. So that's the point. It's hard to say, wether this is good for my photography or not. I don't know. So far I can't recognize an distinctive difference in my imagery.

BUT: The thing changes, when you consider some larger format cameras. For example 6x7 or 6x6. The transition to the out of focus areas is something completely different. The rendering differs so greatly from everything else. The last months I retouched countless images taken on the P30+ and P65+. (It was my job in my practical term) If at all you can compare the dof, and out of focus rendering with 645. For myself I shoot also 6x7 and I think you can't get the look with digital cameras. Period.

I have to admit, I'm torn between digital and using film as well. I miss the emotional connection to the pictures and the feeling of doing something special, when pressing the shutter.
Furtheron I think it's good to cultivate the craft and keep a diversity in the age of Canon/Nikon gear, where everybody uses the same few lenses, the same snesors/sensor sizes and every picture is rendered in the same way.



Best Regards,
Jan

Logged
Erik Kaffehr
 

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #107 on: December 26, 2012, 04:09:11 am »

Hi,

I don't want to argue, but once you are into digital, weather scanning film or shooting digital originals, you are into processing. I'm pretty sure that if you give the same image to 30 different photographers you come up with 30 different renditions.

Best regards
Erik



But that's just the same with film: give 30 printers the same neg and you get 30 different prints.

That's partly why, in another thread here about art and how much involvement the photographer needs to have with the final product, I argued that he has to do it all if he wants to call it his art, but not so if he's happy to call it commerce. It's a semantic mind game that carries premium prices in the gallery world. And in this instance, rightly so.

Rob C

FredBGG

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1630
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #108 on: December 26, 2012, 06:55:42 am »

But one thing that is special about film is that when used rough and not seeking perfect image quality film
still has a very nice look to it. Just look at distressed film. Being physically distressed it has some of the charm that could be associated with antiques.
Distressed digital on the other hand looks like crap. Scratch a CD and you get a corrupted frame with a big ass half the size of the image grey fill.
Logged

VisualLifeLine

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 8
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #109 on: December 26, 2012, 07:13:17 am »

But one thing that is special about film is that when used rough and not seeking perfect image quality film
still has a very nice look to it. Just look at distressed film. Being physically distressed it has some of the charm that could be associated with antiques.
Distressed digital on the other hand looks like crap. Scratch a CD and you get a corrupted frame with a big ass half the size of the image grey fill.
True!

I think, imperfectness attracts me, because it's a counterweight to the idealism in our commercialised world.

Best regards,
Jan
Logged

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #110 on: December 26, 2012, 03:11:20 pm »

True!

I think, imperfectness attracts me, because it's a counterweight to the idealism in our commercialised world.

Best regards,
Jan



That's well put; I sometimes wondered why I found plastic faces and bodies in fashion shots anything but pleasant. I'd wondered if it was envy because I'm no hotshot PS guru by an stretch of the imagination, but being honest with myself, I didn't quite buy the self-criticism. I believe that you're closer to the reason. Also, I remember perfectly well that there were wonderful makeup artists in the 60s and 70s too, and their work still kept the models looking human. Perhaps it's the combination of digital capture, inevitable PS temptation to make it better-than-life and current expectations that has made today's 'look' what it is, and nobody feels safe in breaking the system.

Having said that, much of the actual photography in those images is petty damned wonderful, and not just from a few people, either. Good work is everywhere.

Now, if Vogue suddenly needed a photographic primitive once more...

;-)

Rob C

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #111 on: December 27, 2012, 04:46:42 am »

For a long time there was a small poster over the espresso machine in my lab saying: Drink more coffee to do stupid things even faster. Now I understand: I don't need coffee to do stupid things faster, I need to use digital technology.

Best,
Johannes



Yes, it's much the same thing between film formats too; use 35mm for when you want/need to do a lot quickly, and MF and LF when you need to think longer and can afford the time. Discipline? Well, possibly, but more likely horses for courses.

Rob C

marfa.tx

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 27
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #112 on: December 27, 2012, 01:53:35 pm »

I still shoot film.

I also still make prints (BW & color)

why?
because it is easy.
because the cameras are better to hold.
because people wait longer, talk more, are much less afraid.
because the gods of photon require offerings, else they shall return and take back their oil.
Logged
-------
richard

KevinA

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 979
    • Tree Without a Bird
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #113 on: December 28, 2012, 08:33:23 am »

But that's just the same with film: give 30 printers the same neg and you get 30 different prints.

That's partly why, in another thread here about art and how much involvement the photographer needs to have with the final product, I argued that he has to do it all if he wants to call it his art, but not so if he's happy to call it commerce. It's a semantic mind game that carries premium prices in the gallery world. And in this instance, rightly so.

Rob C
Give me a neg to make 30 prints and you would end up with 30 different prints :-)
Logged
Kevin.

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #114 on: December 28, 2012, 10:32:13 am »

Give me a neg to make 30 prints and you would end up with 30 different prints :-)




That's the advantage I had: spent my formative photographic years working in an industrial photo-unit: we generally had to make prints in sets of 30 to 40 of each, depending on the departments that needed copìes. The skill came from learning how to make greyish turbine blades look correct as black/white prints and the same was true for flame tubes, where the colours in C-type prints meant very significantly different things to the engineers. As a result, my first foray out of that dedicated ethos and into the commercial photo world was quite discouraging: I'd stepped my first step in to the psychology of 'good enough'.

So yep, making thirty identical prints by hand is both possible and regularly done. At least it was during the late 50s/mid-60s when I quit. We didn't do machine prints.

Rob C

rolleiflexpages

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 180
    • http://www.rolleiflexpages.com
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #115 on: January 02, 2013, 05:16:43 pm »

I am using film for 95% of the time, both in 35mm and 120 rollfilm format.
Why? Because the process is more fun; because it just feels better; because you can choose from different emulsions; because the results are more natural; because the results can be more spectacular (slide projection); because somebody else does the processing/printing; ...
Logged
Pascal Heyman - www.rolleiflexpages.com

esox

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 118
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #116 on: January 02, 2013, 06:19:19 pm »

Hi,

Nice thread, didn't read it yet thoroughly (English isn't my mother language), but I will. I still shoot films (BW and positives colour), mainly Foma100, Acros, and Provia or Ektachrome100VS for colours. That is very interesting beacause here, in US, medium or large format is much more used than in France, and maybe because even if photography was born in Europe and more precisely in France, the photographic culture is far more alive in US. The first photo art gallery was created in 1974 in France as far as I know. I find the photographer more opened mind here on that forum than in France. I've been working 3 years with Dennis Stock, US photographer known for his pictures of James Dean, and spoke a lot with him. Photo isn't reallyu considered as a major art in France. It tends to change lately, mainly with "conceptual photography".

So what I mean is that the gap between digital and silver photograpy is far more deep in France than in US. That's a shame.

I use a hassy 503CX, a Sinar F2 and as 35mm, Olympus OM4.

« Last Edit: January 02, 2013, 06:32:04 pm by esox »
Logged

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #117 on: January 03, 2013, 04:38:52 am »

You surprise me; I bought French PHOTO for many, many years, and was of the conviction that France was very photo-aware. About France being the birthplace of photography: there's another school of thought that favours England...

;-)

Rob C

esox

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 118
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #118 on: January 03, 2013, 06:04:37 am »

I didn't say that photography was not present in France. It is very important, but it has been considered for a very long time as a minor art. We have a few very famous photographers like Cartier Bresson, Clergue, etc. But photography suffered a very long time of an image of minor art, not as "good" as painting for example. And also it may be because photography deals with the "Devil" : fashion, publicity, etc. You know in France we are a bit schizophrenic we it is about money...  ;D
Logged

uaiomex

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1211
    • http://www.eduardocervantes.com
Re: Who's still shooting film?
« Reply #119 on: January 03, 2013, 10:47:26 am »

Same here. Photography started in France. Cinema started in France. Too many of the greatest photographers of all times are french. I know french are a little schizo. Hate english, yet they use it everyday instead of using french. (eg.: week-end) Hard to believe.  ???
Eduardo

You surprise me; I bought French PHOTO for many, many years, and was of the conviction that France was very photo-aware. About France being the birthplace of photography: there's another school of thought that favours England...

;-)

Rob C
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 4 5 [6] 7   Go Up