ShooterOR

For most purposes, yes digital can do a wonderful job. A difference: Digital is comprised of individual pixels which are a single tone; film has grain but is not limited to a single tone. In other words, the tones are gradient. So for fine art prints, film still demonstrates "smoother tones".

In film, one should expose for the shadows; in digital expose for the highlights. This is known as "exposing to the right".... referring to the histogram.

Happy shooting.

(Disagree that film is dead!)

Grumpy D Stevens

TRI-X baby. Good stuff. Almost foolproof with just a small amount of camera experience. This what almost everyone used to learn on at school. It is so forgiving.

silver Loc: Santa Monica Ca.

Contrary to popular opinion B&W film is alive and well. I own a custom B&W lab in California and many people are still using B&W film. There is a good selection to choose from. Any good camera shop will have B&W film. If you cant find it near you call B&H or adorama and they can send it to you. As far as processing the film your first few rolls will not be that important so taking it to wall mart or other places like that will be fine. If you decide to keep shooting B&W film you may consider setting up a darkroom for yourself. B&W developing and printing can be very addictive. Enjoy the experience and if you have any questions about the subject I can answer them.

ShooterOR

Cut my darkroom teeth on that. Really grew to like the Ilfords....

ole sarg Loc: south florida

Yesterday I sold my my dLeica because of developing problems and cost. I would probably use tri x and send the film to B&H or Adorama because they still service B&W shooters on a regular basis. IMO The drug stores and walmars basically service color shooter the few that their are - and do a really poor job on B&W.

ShooterOR

Agree with the poor job comments regarding drug stores, walmart, etc. There's a professional lab in walking distance from my house.... I use them exclusively.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

You can use dye-sublimation but I believe most prints are chemical or inkjet. Do not forget that there are some very high end ink jets out there. Ours listed at $30k.

The problem with digital prints is that if you are using inkjet, you do not have a true black. Black ink is really a very, very concentrated "blue" dye. Furthermore, black is printed as a combination of cmyk. The blacks and grays often look very good but sometime they are off. For my small prints, I use Costco and for large prints, we print them internally on our wide-format inkjet printer.

However, if you want black and white, I would suggest sticking to digital.

twowindsbear

Try Kodak T-Max 400. About all that is left. But since you are learning, use any old film on sale.[/quote]

I'd strongly urge you NOT to try 'old' (out dated) film. If - and you very well may - have problems with it, you'll not know for sure if the problem is with the 'old' film, or if you've made some sort of mistake.

Good Luck & have fun

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

First, let me say that film is not dead outright. There is apparently a thriving niche for it and I sincerely wish them well. (I still have chemicals, an enlarger and sundries if anyone is interested in buying.) However, for the vast majority of photographers, I think that they do monochrome digitally.

As for pixels versus grain, digital pixels are indeed bits of r, g, b information resulting in color, size and density. Exposed and developed silver halide crystals in film are black silver oxide. What creates tone is their density and distribution on a two-dimensional surface called film or paper. I do not think either technology is inherently better than the other due to so many variables including camera, materials, and photographer.

I own a sign company. Sometimes we stick our noses an inch from the print and get very emotional about the print being
too this or too that or not enough of something. Should we reprint? Should the customer come and approve it? Then, we step back and view it from a "normal" viewing distance and all of a sudden, the print looks terrific. No need to do anything else. I suggest that the same is true with film versus digital. All of a sudden, differences, real or imaginary, disappear when viewing the prints as you would in a gallery, museum or home. How much does it really matter if you like or dislike what is already hanging on the wall?

Roger Hicks Loc: Aquitaine

Halide and digi never look identical, though the best conversions are very good. But 'not identical' doesn't translate into 'one is better and one is worse'. It's a matter of preference. Most of the colour I shoot is digital: almost all of the B+W is wet-printed film, except for pack shots and the like.

Cheers,

R.

ShooterOR

Get your nose an inch away from a pointillist painting and you'll have the same experience. What is pointillism,but exaggerated grain....
When viewing photographic prints in a gallery, I do get close. There used to be a gallery that had signed Ansel Adams prints in my city. They were somewhere around $16,000. That was on my list "if I won the lottery". A car is a car; but a fine print....

billkmoose

Sixty five years ago I began developing my black and white film in my parent’s garage and remained fascinated with photography as a hobby ever since. You’ll get no pleasure from doing black and white film with drug store processing. Do it yourself because it is so much more fun and educational. As for me in my senility, the fascination with digital has replaced the darkroom, not just for the convenience, but the amazing power to manipulate and control and get the instant feedback of where I messed up.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

Just curious-What do you mean by pack shots?

Bob Curtis Loc: Bay City, TX

If you have the right chemicals for the film you can do your own processing and learn in the the secrets of good processing in the process. I taught both B/W & color slide processing when I was teaching large classes through the Community Education department of our Public Education classes in school. One student, after processing color slide film, got extremely mad because all of the film turned out a bluish color. His answer to his problem was to wad it all up and throw it into the trash. I told him that he did not listen to me as I was explaining the process. It all comes out a bluish color, but as it dries it changes to the color or the original slide image. Boy, was he upset as he only brought one roll of film to process. He became a great listener after that and always asked what color the film would be after processing.

Bob Curtis

Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

So very very true. I still have all my B&W developing equipment but had to toss out the chemicals when I moved. But using my darkroom was sure fun and very educational. Immediate feedback is always best!