Still shooting film

[davetowz]

Just curious, and was not sure where to post this (Mods, move if needed please) Does anyone still shoot 35mm Film, or has everyone switched to digital? I am pretty new @ U/W photog and shoot a basic point and shoot coolpix. Just curious if anyone still rolls it old school, and why?

 

[Thalassamania]

Guilty. 'Cause I've got great film based gear. Some day I'll change, but for now I got a couple of Nikon F2AS with MD-2 drives, action finders, a slew of lenses, an Oceanic and an Ocean Eye housing, a 250 shot back with a custom housing that the Nat'l Geo shop made me, a couple of Nikonos IIIs, one with a Schulke Adaptor and a 13mm Nikkor as well as a Schulke type adaptor that accepts Ikelight ports.

 

[fdog]

I still shoot B+W film when I'm feeling artistic, especially deep.



All the best, James

 

[MarkHerm]

I do, occasionally... I then use B+W film 6x6 medium format and develop it myself (not U/W though). I really love slowing down photography significantly by doing this when I am in the right mood.

I sometimes use this medium format setup as travel rig. This will ensure that I won't take thousands of pictures that are a PITA to select, sort etc. For example, last year I visited Damascus for 3 days and took my film camera. It was a great experience. If you like to see some pics, click here!

 

[danvolker]

My wife Sandra ( shoots for www.sfdj.com) shot film for the last 23 years with a Nikonos and once they came out, the Nikon RS....she loved the saturation of the film pictures( slides) but the annoyance was the issues involved in getting an ideal scan...We had bought the best scanner we could find back in the 90's..the Minolta Dimage with 5400 dpi resolution..but this was essentially shooting the picture "all over again", and color shift, lighting issues, and significant photoshop time with each slide left this annoying for use in web articles and for printing on Epson 4880 or above.

When Sandra went digital 2 years ago, with a Canon 5D Mark II and Sea & Sea Housing w/ Inon strobes, the learning curve was not "terrible", but she was forced to learn a great deal more about how to use programs like Adobe LightRoom, as this becomes part of the inception of each shot. Many of the film photographers also hated the idea of any work on a computer being done at all on a slide, this Not being photography to them, but rather, artificial manipulation of images--and they did not respect this.....

There is almost no way you can prefer the film, if you spend a few months shooting digital, and get some serious instruction in how to develop the digital images with Lightroom.

Sandra almost never wants to pull out the old Nikon RS she loved so much before.....and really likes being able to shoot 555 shots compared to 36 shots

We do have a few 120 meg slide scans from shots taken by the RS, where the saturation is spectacular, and the image can be blown up to 12 feet high by 8 feet wide, and is still sharp.....kind of hard to equal with a 21 megapixel camera

 

[Thalassamania]

Scanning so that you can interface with the industry is a major problem. The stock agency I was consulting taxonomist for finally when out and bought a several hundred thousand dollar drum scanner and employed a guy full time to run it.

 

[danvolker]

Scanning so that you can interface with the industry is a major problem. The stock agency I was consulting taxonomist for finally when out and bought a several hundred thousand dollar drum scanner and employed a guy full time to run it.

We found a local printer with a good drum scanner, and they charge about $12 per 60 meg image...they manage to be much closer to the actual slide than our own scans on the MINOLTA, meaning much less work with Lightroom...
Still, at $12 per image we decide to drum scan, a digital camera starts becoming attractive

 

[Thalassamania]

Since the stock agency had hundreds of thousands of film images in the vault, the backlog made that sort of investment reasonable, but I was amazed at the hardware cost and skill involved in producing a top notch digital scan.

 

[danvolker]

Since the stock agency had hundreds of thousands of film images in the vault, the backlog made that sort of investment reasonable, but I was amazed at the hardware cost and skill involved in producing a top notch digital scan.

And back in the old days, you would have all these great slides you would have kept as your best of reef, best of wreck, best of turtles, etc., and you would do slide shows with the best...and for the best of the best, you might pay to have a few printed for the wall.

Slide shows with a slide p[rojector, were like the Facebook or powerpoint shows of today

 

[Thalassamania]

I still have plenty of carousel trays kicking about ... well, I threw a lot away when I moved to Hawaii.

Some go back to the transition point, talks I wrote in PowerPoint and then put on slides for the presentation.