If you really want slow and inconvenient and expensive, that will eventually lead you to a large-format camera. A good day out with the Wista might not end up with enough shots to fill the Jobo tank (6 shots).
How to Get into Film Photography (and Why You Should)
11–20 of 82 posts
Re: How to Get into Film Photography (and Why You Should)
#12Film is a very fun hobby that I recently began enjoying. I’ve never been into digital photography — the instant feedback kind of removed the magic for me. Film forces you to finish the roll (or you’re throwing money away) and that helps keep me engaged. When you get the scans back, you get excited to get out and shoot another roll. I will say it’s expensive, but the real expense isn’t the stock or the gear but develo…
If you shoot B/W home development is easily achieved - even C-41 is doable at home but it is more involved. Of course that only gets you negatives, you’ll either need to scan them yourself, pay for it, have an enlarger to make photographic prints, etc…
Re: How to Get into Film Photography (and Why You Should)
#13Getting your film developed is why everyone moved to DSLR's and mirrorless. It's not so much that the newer digital cameras are better (they are), it's the fact that you don't have to wait 2 weeks for your photos.
I have Nikon SLR's that have been sitting in the bag for 20 years. I have Cannon DSLR's that see light a couple times a year. I have a GoPro that sees the abuse that an ex-skater, ex-snowboarder, ex-surfer, does to his equipment through no fault of his own.
My issue with film cameras even back in the 90s was the varying quality of film developers to get your photos and the turn around time. Not to mention the photo shop looking at all your photos.
Re: How to Get into Film Photography (and Why You Should)
#14The thing with the "real" camera sitting in the suitcase and the phone coming out for actual shooting has been a common trope for a while now. But phones have been around long enough that the difference between a DSLR with a good lens or two has become more well known. I have the latter and it certainly does not sit idle, even though it's over 15 years old by now. It has been such a liberating change coming from film…
I bought an old prosumer point and shoot recently to take some more thoughtful pictures. It's fairly limited by the CCD sensor at 12MP. My phone, a GS22, takes sharper pictures, automatically does the cool aperture settings for a foreground focus, blurry background, and other fancy things. But when you zoom in, there's a ton of terrible upscaling blur that sorta degrades the overall shot. Additionally it just isn't t…
Not only do phones have the upscaling blur, there's also a telltale "painterly" sign of convolutional neural network based processing that I see everywhere now especially in Google products.
Re: How to Get into Film Photography (and Why You Should)
#15The thing with the "real" camera sitting in the suitcase and the phone coming out for actual shooting has been a common trope for a while now. But phones have been around long enough that the difference between a DSLR with a good lens or two has become more well known. I have the latter and it certainly does not sit idle, even though it's over 15 years old by now. It has been such a liberating change coming from film…
I bought an old prosumer point and shoot recently to take some more thoughtful pictures. It's fairly limited by the CCD sensor at 12MP. My phone, a GS22, takes sharper pictures, automatically does the cool aperture settings for a foreground focus, blurry background, and other fancy things. But when you zoom in, there's a ton of terrible upscaling blur that sorta degrades the overall shot. Additionally it just isn't t…
> automatically does the cool aperture settings for a foreground focus, blurry background, and other fancy things.
Its not actually doing any cool aperture settings, its faking it all with software. And depending on the software stack and the picture in question, it can do a pretty bad job at it. I do appreciate the effects at times and use them myself, but on many shots I'll notice the depth of field effects being used in places where it shouldn't like too far on the shoulders, turning the edges of someone's hair to mess, a secondary subject next to but just slightly behind the main subject getting radically out of the fake depth of field, etc.
Most of the photos I take day to day are on my phone's camera, for sure. But when I'm actually wanting to really take some pictures, I bust out an actual camera. My current main goto is my G9x Mark II, which is a lot of fun and can still send photos straight to my phone after shooting so I can easily send them to people right away.
Re: How to Get into Film Photography (and Why You Should)
#16The thing with the "real" camera sitting in the suitcase and the phone coming out for actual shooting has been a common trope for a while now. But phones have been around long enough that the difference between a DSLR with a good lens or two has become more well known. I have the latter and it certainly does not sit idle, even though it's over 15 years old by now. It has been such a liberating change coming from film…
I bought an old prosumer point and shoot recently to take some more thoughtful pictures. It's fairly limited by the CCD sensor at 12MP. My phone, a GS22, takes sharper pictures, automatically does the cool aperture settings for a foreground focus, blurry background, and other fancy things. But when you zoom in, there's a ton of terrible upscaling blur that sorta degrades the overall shot. Additionally it just isn't t…
Not wanting to carry an assortment of lenses with me, I have used bridge cameras for ages, and my current one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panasonic_Lumix_DMC-FZ1000) is pretty well-reviewed and generally does make really good photos, but my 6-year-old Pixel 2 phone still takes better HDR pictures. Sure, you can optimize what the FZ1000 does by adjusting the exposure time, but sometimes I just don't have the time to do that.
Re: How to Get into Film Photography (and Why You Should)
#17I think this advice may work for some, but for most I think advantages of digital far outweigh film, even for people just getting into the hobby. Chiefly, being able to make thousands of mistakes is not a bug, but a feature - you need to make mistakes in order to improve, and being able to make them quickly is a huge help. Secondly, digital cameras are so good now that you can just do so many more things than you can…
I spent a lot of time on B&W through school but dropped it once I didn't have access to a "real" darkroom any longer. (I had the equipment but I quickly decided setting it up in an apartment darkroom was for the birds and, even after I bought a house, didn't really have an appropriate space.
After that it was just color slides but it pretty much became just a trips and special events thing. I go in and out of using my interchangeable lens digital cameras but it's low friction enough if I want to pull them out.
Re: How to Get into Film Photography (and Why You Should)
#18I've shot tons of film over a great many years and I have a sizeable collection of cheap and expensive 35mm and 120mm film cameras covering the period from the late 1800's to the 1980's. I stuck to film well after digital cameras got cheap enough for my tastes and I still love to shoot film - I have about 25 rolls of exposed color film in my office waiting for me to develop, so I still shoot a fair amount on film. I also feel more of a connection to my film cameras since they have a personal history and are works of art.
One regret I have about the film era is that, starting out as a teenager, I scraped to afford film and, recently, it struck me how large the gap is between the memories I have now and the memories I captured on film back then. Once I had a job and could afford to take more photos, I seemed to have decided that photography was for travel and special occasions and I, sadly, took photos of little else.
Now I shoot a full-frame mirrorless digital (mostly so I can use my old lenses and also, I hate cell-phone photography ergonomics). I carry my camera everywhere and shoot quite a few photos on any given day. I am learning so much more about photography now that I can freely experiment and the equipment allows me to capture things that were only rarely possible before.
That being said, I encourage everyone to try film for whatever reasons strikes your fancy. The more people into film, the more options we'll have for film stock, chemicals, and cameras.
Re: How to Get into Film Photography (and Why You Should)
#19My Mom never left! She has a cell phone but still uses an old point and click film camera (at least it has autowind and doesn’t use the old lever to advance the film). We keep trying to convince her that paying for film and development isn’t such a good thing, but she is set in her ways. The grandkids at least are amazed when she brings it out. She even has a laptop and a desktop computer where she could store the photos. She has a kindle, a tablet, and a phone. She can email, text, FaceTime, etc. But she simply won’t take pictures with a phone.
Re: How to Get into Film Photography (and Why You Should)
#20If you really want slow and inconvenient and expensive, that will eventually lead you to a large-format camera. A good day out with the Wista might not end up with enough shots to fill the Jobo tank (6 shots).
At least gear wise, a large format is even more affordable than Hasselblad/Mamiya 7 kit, especially if you are willing to 3D print one.