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Peterff wrote:
An interesting set of observations, but on-point plain English seems accurate! Of course, you haven't indicated which contributions you classify as wonderful and which as useless..... :)
The filters observation is an interesting one, and a good one. Many people suggest that filters other than CPL and ND are of limited use in a digital world, since these can be adjusted / applied in post-processing. At least with Canon digital (for JPEG) they can be applied in camera for monochrome, and/or applied in raw in post with Canon DPP. Do they have the same effect? That may be a good question, but filters probably become important again for film usage. Especially if 'wet' darkroom printing is to used as opposed to scanning and digital PP. A potentially interesting discussion here.
Cost? I think that becomes a little more tricky, especially when you bring lenses into the mix as you have done.
Sandra has chosen a very wise approach from the cost perspective. She already has well demonstrated skill and talent, and has a good stable of digital equipment with full frame EF lenses at this point. Adding a film body is inconsequential by comparison.
At least with Canon good lenses still command a decent price, even the FL or FD lenses (pre 1987) that are not compatible with EOS cameras without modification or adapters and that have limited / restricted use in many cases. So, some discussion about costs could also be interesting.
As people have pointed out, older film camera prices appear to be stabilizing, even increasing, and the better glass has never really been cheap unless you find someone that has no idea about what they have. That happens less often in this internet connected world. However, old mechanical or electro-mechanical things do degrade over time - shutters, light seals, fungus and so on, so some degree of caution is advised....
An interesting set of observations, but on-point p... (
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I think its time to make a serious response. Yes, Gessman makes some good observations. I think Gessman was trying to be nice but was holding back!! :lol:
The problem today, I feel, is that most that want to call themselves film shooter are not actually film shooters. They are recording on film but then go full digital after someone else processes and scans their film.
I guess that will give most the mostalgic fix without actually doing any work or paying any dues.
Normally in film printing(silver), one can use a lot of the filtering mentiond by Gessman in printing at the enlarger, especially the better ones with the color heads or it has to be done manually with a seperate set of yellow/magenta filters and lots of trial and error until one gets very proficient at it.
I personally don't see any difference between shooting film and shooting digi once you take the darkroom out of it. The recording of the scene is exactly the same. Turn off the screen on your dslr and pretent you recieved a CD in the mail when you download to the computer.
Film(B&W) is NOT about how you record the image, but about the knowledge of how to see a scene then shoot it, and print a good final contrasty print. B&W is about black and about white and producing the proper contrast between them to make the image pop!
Just like photography today, it depended on the skill/artistic ability of the photographer to produce a good composition with the correct set of attribute to come out correct in the final print.
Too many of these discussions wind up in exactly the same place as all the Digi discussions do, about the easy parts of photography, the technical aspects of film and gear and nothing to do with shooting film itself.
But I guess that in reality, once we convert film to a digi file we are in actuality at the same exact place and the only thing that counts are your PS skills and use of PS filters to try and replicate what film and a good film shooter did without actually having those skills. If we are using digi files, why are we trying to replicate since are really no longer dealing with film and the special set of skills and look that went with it?!
I'm not saying that Nightski shouldn't or won't have fun with her new film camera, as all learning experiences are good for us but we need to keep in perspective what our end goals are and what and how we are trying to achieve them.
The biggest potential of shooting film today is its potential to very inexpensively creat really large files to would otherwise be cost prohibive with digi.
I'm looking forward to Nightskis shots. I know they will be good because her skills as a photographer have gotten really good.
Nobody was a film monster then a flop at digi, it's really all exactly the same from that perspective. It's still all about the composition. You can either shoot or you can't, no matter what the medium!!! ;-)
SS