Why film

[richard littlewood]

Hi all
First off I dont want to appear at all inflamatory by asking this, but I'd be interested to hear from other users as to why exactly is it you still use film. I'm always being asked this, and it does get me thinking. For myself it's .....
The money! I can't afford high end digital and computer stuff.
I like the idea of not taking at least 400 photographs each time I go out.
B+W film can have an enormous tonal ability/detail/sharpness.
I'm not too keen on the artificial sharpness that a digital flow encourages..
I still like printing and toning a blank piece of paper.
A neg can always be scanned.
A finished darkroom print is a fine thing.

The downside for me is film and chemical costs and sometimes the effort needed to make a decent print from a tricky neg - especially if someone is paying for it!

I have to say, again without being inflamatory, that if I used colour I'd be more swayed towards all digital, and not just scanning a neg/pos.

This is as I trully understand, a tedious issue, all that film v digital stuff, but one I dare say most of us think about now and again. Is film use still ticking all the boxes for you?

[Thingy]

I use both. I use a DSLR for photographing wildlife, birds and insects (macro), but still use my original film OM1 for photomicrography with my 1938 "pedigree" microscope, not that I use it (the OM1, not the microscope) very much these days. I still have my OM2s/p but haven't used it for some years. I DO fancy an OM3Ti though!

I use a Contax G2 rangefinder with B+W film for documentary work as it's unobtrusive, fast, very versitile & has Zeiss lenses I also like it for low light work when my eyesight's playing up (dry eyes). It's really my favourite 35mm film camera - and all purchased half price after it was announced Contax film cameras were being discontinued. It beats the Leica rangefinder cameras, and I write as a Leicaphile.

I PREFER FILM for landscape photography, whether it is colour or B+W and I prefer working in LARGE FORMAT. For macrophotography I prefer LF macro for stationary subjects such as details of items, but prefer MF for location work at a low level as I sometimes cannot get up after kneeling/crouching down.

I HATE PIXELS! Digital photography is also too easy. There's less challenge and much less satisfaction when making images. I feel my film images are my own work and less that of the camera's electronics. There are specific problems with photomicrography which current digital cameras cannot overcome.... unless one uses a modern (and very expensive) microscope with dedicated digital camera and a control board. Photographing Gram stained bacteria remains, at least for non-professional microscopists, better with the resolution and flexibility monochrome film offers.

FILM also offer benefits that digital cannot match in terms of quality, sharpness and that elusive bokeh.

..... Also, I began photography using FILM and feel digital is somehow cheating. Call me old fashioned!

[DJ]

For me it's predominantly image quality:

- the very high resolution available on LF film
- the quality of the lenses
- the movements allowing pin sharp focus front to back

lead to ultimately ( operator notwithstanding ) higher image quality, finer detail and more pleasing images. Do I think these are achievable digitally? probably, but at a very hefty price, in the region of £30k+

I have a Canon 1Ds Mk3 digital jobbie, it's a fantastic bit of kit and I do use it for subjects where the LF isn't practical, but for landscapes and anything I want to take time over and be special, I feel as though I want to use the LF.

Having said all that, there's also a certain "romance" to using the LF camera, somehow it seems more "fun".

Odd terms I know, it's difficult to put into words, but I'm sure you all understand what I mean.

[Charles Twist]

Hello Richard,
Not a bad idea to re-assess this one. A few years ago, the discussion was inflammatory because digital did have a lot of flaws, but nowadays, the quality is really good - especially with a sharp lens. So things are more balanced.
I think that being LF'ers, we see different advantages and we are not just comparing film vs digital. For me, that's a tired discussion: they're just different and in a well-exposed shot, there'll be little to choose between two prints nowadays. Of course in a less well exposed shot (or equally in highlights and shadows), things like grain or pixels creep in and somehow the former seem more pleasing.
So we as LF'ers have two special attributes: large formats of film and view cameras. The first allows smooth transitions and to develop soft detail in the out-of-focus areas. I guess that's where the appeal of mythical bokeh actually comes from. The second allows finessing: you obviously get the full range of movements but digital is catching up fast here. I suspect however the large ground glass helps and digi-person would need a tethered monitor to derive the full benefit.
I think combining the two attributes, the camera becomes more like a musical instrument where you can subtly control the rendition. You can really build a picture with far more complexity than mere composition. For artistic studies of my surrounds, fixed-plane, 35mm cameras (film or digi) just disappoint me (I went to LF because 35mm film didn't do it for me - I am only a recent digital convert). As an interesting aside, in this case, I don't find digi to be that much faster than LF, for the reason that finding and framing the picture is the most time-consuming part. For the more reportage side of my photography, digital is great for its speed of use, its accuracy of focus & metering and the feedback of the LCD. Horses for courses. I am curious about LF digital but can't afford it right now.
Regards,
Charles

[Nigels]

I am a member of a camera club whose membership is almost exclusively using digital now. In the early days digital was responsible for an increase in quantity but a decrease in quality of work but in the last couple of years the quality of work being produced is of a very high standard, especially in natural history subjects.
One quote that I usually give when asked about my LF film usage is that I work with computers and my hobby is photography, not computing. Obviously I scan, Photoshop and print so gigital is an integral part of my work flow.
It comes down to two things for me;
1. I just enjoy the process of capturing the real world around me on my LF camera. I have so much input. I often refer to it as photogrphy in the raw. Always using first principals to be a "photographer".
2. Secondly, call me a luddite, but I do like to have a "physical" product at the end of my work. That being the tranny/negative. Whatever happens to my scan I always have that to go back too. It seems so much more tangable that an abstract bunch of 1's and 0's stored on a disc.
Anyway, I'll stop rambling now.
P.S. I do have a Nikon D70 and a Canon G5 which I use for snappy or location rekkying.

[richard littlewood]

It would be interesting to find out the youngest person here who willingly goes for film and large format. I'm 52.

[Emmanuel Bigler]

Why film ?
To the many good reasons listed above in favour of film use, I may add this comment.

I use 100% film for my personnal and family photography which is a hobby.
The number of images produced per year is small enough to justify that I would not gain anything by switching to digital photography for the family album. And I have too many film cameras that I love to manipulate and I have no joy at all manipulating auto-everything plastic & silicon stuff.
I really do not want to spend too much time managing a digital archive for my personnal and family pictures. I do not want to bother with the expected life time of CD burned on a family computer or with managing RAID storage systems at home.

At home, I have my father's collection of family B&W negatives from 1935 up to the sixties where he switched to Kodachrome colour slides in 35mm, and I can print decent images, at least from a hobby & family point of view, from all those original documents.
For all the originals, no speclai care was done except piling the B&W negatives up in protective sheets, or piling the small yellow Kodachrome boxes of mounted 35-mm slides in various plastic boxes, or piling 6x6 & other MF unmounted slides in protective sheets. (I still do not have any 4x5" colour transparencies, a shame, i'll have to correct this soon)

Regarding the traditional darkroom, I spend too much time in front of a computer to find digital processing of family images attractive. However:
- I do scan a few images for sharing with the family, relatives & friends
- for my job, all images I have to record to document & illustrate reports & other digital paperwork are done digital or by scanning old films..

----------

It would be interesting to find out the youngest person here who willingly goes for film and large format. I'm 52.

At each of our informal medium & large format meetings we have young people who enjoy film photography, even if they have started by digital photography. But this is of course not representative of mainstream among young people...
For example a few weeks ago we had an informal meeting in Nancy at the Biennale de l'Image
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3326/458 ... 9bc636.jpg
Imagine the same scene with somebody holding a CD or a memory stick against the sun

[timparkin]

Let's ignore medium format digital backs for a moment

1) Resolution - nothing yet compares with a peice of LF film, especially in colour texture detail.
2) Sharpness - LF lenses are not 'stressed' in the same way digital lenses are, especially when wide angle lenses need retrofocus. This means clinically sharp corners when you want them
3) Composing - the size of the ground glass makes 'living' with the picture before taking the shot doable
4) Focus - tilt is manageable at the scale of large format when it's bloody difficult for SLR/MF
5) Color - There is something about how film works that you can't get out of a digital sensor + photoshop (at least not the ones I've tried)
6) Archival - Taking less shots on an archival digital medium is pretty cool
7) Highlight Handling - Film just rolls into the highlights with panache - digital slams against them like a 10 ton truck against a brick wall.

If we take into account digital backs

1) Resolution - although medium format digital backs have reached LF line resolution I'm unsure whether they have reached 'texture' colour resolution. I'm running some tests with Joe Cornish over the next couple of months to see (comparising side by side views using his P45+ and Techno + Rodenstock Digital lenses vs my Ebony + Sironar S).
2) Sharpness - OK, MF is pretty close but needs an almost superhuman accuracy of focus to place the correct plane
3) Composing - it's just not enjoyable working on a postage stamp with a loupe
4) Color - MF systems are undoubtedly better but still difficult to get that 'beleivable exaggeration' etc. The 'canned presets' of Portra, Velvia, Astia, etc are beautiful
5) Highlight Handling - better, need a test with Mr Cornish. The quality I've seenin the P45 highlights trounces DSLRs though..

So - even if I could afford an MF system, I don't think I would be gaining much except for the ability to take more shots.. and I don't need to take more shots (in most cases - it would be nice to water effects where the results are a gamble in many cases).

I do use a digital system (5Dmk2 + 24TSEmk2) and I like what it does - I just don't love what it does.

Tim

[joolsb]

digital slams against them like a 10 ton truck against a brick wall.

Not every digi, Tim. The Sony A900 does a pretty good job of degrading gracefully into blown highlights. It's one of the reasons I went for it over the 5d Mk. 2.

Regarding film vs. digi... LF is just, well, more fun to be honest. It's the whole process - so much more absorbing than mere 'digisnapping'. Unlike digital, you can really 'lose yourself' in the time it takes to make a single image. I frequently lose track of time under the darkcloth....

[timparkin]

digital slams against them like a 10 ton truck against a brick wall.

Not every digi, Tim. The Sony A900 does a pretty good job of degrading gracefully into blown highlights. It's one of the reasons I went for it over the 5d Mk. 2.

Be interested to see some directly into sun shots compared with similar film shots? In my experience the colours go wierd around the clipped area as different channels clip at different points. RAW converters try and fix this but can't get that smooth colour transition through to clear film. I'm happy to be proved wrong though

Regarding film vs. digi... LF is just, well, more fun to be honest. It's the whole process - so much more absorbing than mere 'digisnapping'. Unlike digital, you can really 'lose yourself' in the time it takes to make a single image. I frequently lose track of time under the darkcloth....

So many of the advantages are to do with using a view camera (which is film only for now and the far forseeable future..

Tim

[joolsb]

Be interested to see some directly into sun shots compared with similar film shots? In my experience the colours go wierd around the clipped area as different channels clip at different points. RAW converters try and fix this but can't get that smooth colour transition through to clear film. I'm happy to be proved wrong though

Well, I didn't say it was perfect but it certainly seems to handle the transition better than most digital cameras I've seen. It may only be subjective, though.... I guess I need to bring some of that Parkin scientific rigour to bear on the matter.

[AbsolutelyN]

For me the main things are:

1. Highlight handling, as Tim has already mentioned, which is compltely different to the harsh way digital handles them.
2. Colour negative film - huge latitude and beautiful realistic colours which for me creates the ultimate medium to work with.

Tristan

[richard littlewood]

So far it seems like colour film users are coming up with decent reasons, and I'd include a lot of those reasons and more when it comes to black and white film, and a big part of that is the actual print.

As an example, on a recent trip I took the same shot as a mate of mine. I used Foma 100 in 5x4, and he used a 1ds mk3 with an L lens. He was amazed when he saw my print - natural softly detailed sky, little patches of paper base white that dont have a blown out look, tons of heavy detailed darks, sharp but not edgy sharpness, and tonally very inviting. He had to use a grad, and that often cocks things up, solving one problem while creating another (sorry grad users), none of the film smoothness, and a tad coarse.
Where he won out totally (even though I had MF with 400 film) was in certain types of shot - waters edge stuff, high ISO wandering around pics, some long exposures (I love digital for that) and of course that ability to get a right shot courtesy of the image preview.
Those things I do envy, but I think film LF steers you into an area that is often overlooked by digists, even high end digital stuff, and I suppose it's linked to the fact that we have fewer shots, each shot costs time and money, and we have perhaps a certain detatchment of view brought about by the ground glass image that is never the same with a prism and a few more lenses in the way.

Just a question for colour LFers. Assuming you have a neg/pos that is OK, what do you do with it? Straight darkroom prints? Scanned and printed? I know a lot of folks scan their own - ever have problems with a scanned/screen/print image that would never have happened with a darkroom print, or is it all working well, offering more and never a look back.

All the best
Richard

[AbsolutelyN]

I mentioned colour negative as this is simply my main film stock. I rarely use b/w these days. The properties apply equally to b/w which is even more flexible in almost every way, more latitude, better control of contrast etc. Negative film pretty much allows you to drop grads altogether if you wish. I can't remember the last time I used one and I certainly don't miss them (to be honest I'd rather let the sky burn out than use a grad).

Whilst I'd love to print colour negs traditionally I don't have the space or funds. However it is something I would love to explore one day. Right now I have a hybrid workflow, analog capture and digital output, and I'm very happy with the results. For me problems occur if you do not drumscan film. In my experience the colour, tones and detail all seem to be lacking with a flatbed. So without a drumscanner I think I may have abandoned LF long ago.

Tristan

[Thingy]

I would rather wet print my monochrome work but do not have the space. I would need sufficient space to have a disabled accessible darkroom, which is ruled out on costs and space grounds. As a result I use the hybrid method allowing me to make high resolution, 16 bit, monochrome scans. I would prefer the wet method however as I find the digital process rather intimidating....