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Don't hate the film noob

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davesurrey said:
Plenty of 120 stock in my fridge for my Bronica ETRSi. I sold my Fuji GSW690 iii some months ago so only have 9 film cameras left!

As they say...nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
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Nostalgia and sentimentalism bring added meaning to life, especially because fond memories are forever. :-)
 
tbcass said:
Actually the best film scans I've seen are from B&W negatives. Many of them are fantastic. In many ways nothing beats B&W film. The very high DR of a B&W negative can't be matched in digital...
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Absolutely! :-)
 
Mark Scott Abeln said:
hdr said:
I have always thought that the film grains on a negative has a unique nature and characteristics which no other medium can duplicate. I had thought that scanning is in effect converting these analog characteristics to digital, which is not unlike a DAC in audio. The only way to benefit from the subtle qualities of the film grains is to transfer the image to paper via an old-time enlarger.

Am I mistaken in my belief? Hope you can en!ighten.
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I suppose it depends on the resolution of your scan. Higher resolution scans may resolve more of the film grain, at the expense of huge output TIFF files. Eventually you hit the law of diminishing returns.

In my film experience, the glamour of film grain wears off quickly. Grain works best when it suggests detail and texture, but only when it is not particularly noticable as grain itself: unless you are going for a spontaneous, gritty effect.
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I believe one day in the not too distant future, we will see sensors which can surpass what film grains can offer in terms of subtle characteristics and effects.
 
Phil4All Photography said:
I have a bad feeling about this question, but here it goes ...

I have never shot film I'm 25 and I've only shot digital. I'm obsessed with film photography, though, and the more I get involved with the art of photography, the more I've come to the realization that digital photography is inferior. Of course, as a professional, to shoot film in this day and age is fairly impractical. I'm not trying to spark up a debate between the 2, but I just had a few questions. I've found a few cheap Pentax K1000's on eBay that are in good condition, and I want to start shooting.

I live in Cape May and there are no longer any photo labs. To my understanding, you can scan negatives once the film has been developed, but there's no other way to scan the film, correct? The film has to be developed first?

Thank you you for the responses.
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tbcass said:
In what way is digital "inferior"? I shot film for 40 years before committing 100% to digital. There are reasons for shooting film for sure but they have nothing to do with being "better", a term that involves so many factors that such a determination is purely subjective.
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Can it be a question of 'film fetish'? Just wondering. :-)
 
davesurrey said:
A few years ago I digitised all my negatives and slide and even those prints where the negatives had been lost. It took a lot of time and effort but it was well worth it.

Now they are all available on my PC and I often go back to look at them. This is very different to beforehand when they stayed in slide cases, albums and boxes and were rarely seen. Digital has given me instant access.
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Yup, lots of work involved but it's well worth the effort.

Do make backup copies of all those images, though. With flash drives so cheap, it is good to backup several times over, on separate drives. :-)
 
Most people posting here are men. Most men, especially those younger than 50 +/-, get off on owning or being what they perceive as the "best", biggest, fastest, whatever. When challenged they will argue endlessly to prove their point even if they take on an unwinnable position.
 
tbcass said:
Most people posting here are men. Most men, especially those younger than 50 +/-, get off on owning or being what they perceive as the "best", biggest, fastest, whatever. When challenged they will argue endlessly to prove their point even if they take on an unwinnable position.
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Yes, it saddens me the most to see otherwise promising photographers waste their time and resources using film when they should be spending their time and effort developing their photographic skills with today's excellent digital equipment. Doing film will deprive them of good opportunities to better themselves photographically.

Granted, doing film can enrich oneself in terms of experience, if that is the intention, then it is well and good, but not to waste their time after having that experience.
 
tbcass said:
The Davinator said:
Scanning doesn't turn a film file into a digital looking one. You can win...but it appears you have a lot to learn.
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If you are looking for the film look, especially the unique look of various films, you lose much of that when you convert to digital. Much of the film experience and creativity occurs in the dark room.
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I absolutely agree with tbcass.

A film negative is an item which contains characteristics unique to medium. Thus, there is no such thing as a 'film file'.
 
hdr said:
tbcass said:
The Davinator said:
Scanning doesn't turn a film file into a digital looking one. You can win...but it appears you have a lot to learn.
Click to expand...
If you are looking for the film look, especially the unique look of various films, you lose much of that when you convert to digital. Much of the film experience and creativity occurs in the dark room.
Click to expand...
I absolutely agree with tbcass.

A film negative is an item which contains characteristics unique to medium. Thus, there is no such thing as a 'film file'.
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You've got me mixed up with someone else. Even you agreed with me that a scanned negative will look different than a purely analog image. It has nothing to do with DR or resolution. B&W film in particular has greater DR than a single RAW image.
 
tbcass said:
You've got me mixed up with someone else. Even you agreed with me that a scanned negative will look different than a purely analog image. It has nothing to do with DR or resolution. B&W film in particular has greater DR than a single RAW image.
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backup? Does Raid 5 ring a bell? :-)
 
davesurrey said:
backup? Does Raid 5 ring a bell? :-)
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RAID-5 is more for speed rather than data redundancy. I've heard of two drives failing simultaneously in such a configuration.

But I've heard of folks using a bunch of flash thumb drives together in RAID-5 and getting really nice performance out of them :-)
 
Not sure I agree Mark. Raid 5 allows fast rebuilds should a drive fail. Yes it's possible that more than one could fail at the same time but statistically that's highly unlikely and I guess just as unlikely as a main HDD fail as well as the mirrored backup simultaneously. (Never heard that and I do IT consultancy).

I use a raid array as I don't just save photos on it and for critical stuff I use a separate backup.

Considering the TeraBytes of "data" I have (no, not just photos) any form of flash memory is out of the question.

What do you do Mark?
 
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hdr said:
Yes, it saddens me the most to see otherwise promising photographers waste their time and resources using film when they should be spending their time and effort developing their photographic skills with today's excellent digital equipment. Doing film will deprive them of good opportunities to better themselves photographically.


http://singaporegallery.com : Sightseeing Without Hassle
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Hate to say it, but I'd love to know who died and left you in charge. Where are your images, taken with "today's excellent digital equipment"? When I shoot film,trust me, I am not "wasting" anything. And before I'll listen to such arrogant advice as yours, I want to know who is dispensing it.
 
Hi Phil,

Heed your terrible feeling and head over to apug.org (the Analog Photography User's Group) for questions like this. APUG is full of helpful, knowledgeable people.

Film threads = pointlessness on DPReview. There are just too many weirdos looking for reasons to hate and troll here, and curiosity with film--for whatever reason--always provokes the worst of it.

If you're interested in development & scan processes you can do yourself, that's great--head on over to APUG and read through the loads of great info there to get started.

However, if you just want to get your feet wet with film exposures and with the various "looks" you can achieve using different stocks, there are a number of fantastic labs that offer develop & scan services by mail--you send in your film, they develop and scan your negatives and FTP you the results in about a week.

Richard Photo Lab is the choice of the biggest film-shooting pros. (Their client list reads like a who's-who in the biggest professional portrait and fine-art photography names, film or digital.) They do 35mm C41 or BW development and 16mpx scans for about $30 / roll and deliver gorgeous color-corrected results. And if there's a specific look / color you prefer, they'll gladly talk with you about how to achieve it--just call and ask.

The FIND lab is another great choice: they offer a development + scan + critique service in which they'll offer you helpful frame-by-frame commentary to go along with your color-corrected scans.

Good luck!
Phil4All Photography said:
I have a bad feeling about this question, but here it goes ...

I have never shot film I'm 25 and I've only shot digital. I'm obsessed with film photography, though, and the more I get involved with the art of photography, the more I've come to the realization that digital photography is inferior. Of course, as a professional, to shoot film in this day and age is fairly impractical. I'm not trying to spark up a debate between the 2, but I just had a few questions. I've found a few cheap Pentax K1000's on eBay that are in good condition, and I want to start shooting.

I live in Cape May and there are no longer any photo labs. To my understanding, you can scan negatives once the film has been developed, but there's no other way to scan the film, correct? The film has to be developed first?

Thank you you for the responses.

--
Hobbyist since 2010. Member since 2014.
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davesurrey said:
Not sure I agree Mark. Raid 5 allows fast rebuilds should a drive fail. Yes it's possible that more than one could fail at the same time but statistically that's highly unlikely and I guess just as unlikely as a main HDD fail as well as the mirrored backup simultaneously. (Never heard that and I do IT consultancy).
Click to expand...
From what I've heard, the risk is higher if all drives come from the same batch: tolerances these days are quite tight; I remember a group of technicians who predicted a failure time, and they all came out to watch it fail, on schedule!

RAID 5 only has a strong speed advantage if you use a high capacity data channel; back in the old days we used a proprietary IBM fiber optic data bus for this purpose, and these days I would suppose a PCI RAID card would be needed for this, although I stand to be corrected.

There are advantages and disadvantages to every RAID and non-standard multidisk configuration; this article describes some:

Loading…

en.wikipedia.org
davesurrey said:
I use a raid array as I don't just save photos on it and for critical stuff I use a separate backup.

Considering the TeraBytes of "data" I have (no, not just photos) any form of flash memory is out of the question.
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i just threw that out for fun!
davesurrey said:
What do you do Mark?
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As I use an iMac, my options are rather limited, and I've had bad luck using the built-in high speed Thunderbolt data channel.

I have a backup drive connected via USB 3.0, and two network servers connected via gigabit Ethernet; one of these has a single drive for backup and the other has dual mirrored drives. These are slow but get the job done. I rotate my backups off-site periodically.
 
MiraShootsNikon said:
Hi Phil,

Heed your terrible feeling and head over to apug.org (the Analog Photography User's Group) for questions like this. APUG is full of helpful, knowledgeable people.

Film threads = pointlessness on DPReview. There are just too many weirdos looking for reasons to hate and troll here, and curiosity with film--for whatever reason--always provokes the worst of it.

If you're interested in development & scan processes you can do yourself, that's great--head on over to APUG and read through the loads of great info there to get started.

However, if you just want to get your feet wet with film exposures and with the various "looks" you can achieve using different stocks, there are a number of fantastic labs that offer develop & scan services by mail--you send in your film, they develop and scan your negatives and FTP you the results in about a week.

Richard Photo Lab is the choice of the biggest film-shooting pros. (Their client list reads like a who's-who in the biggest professional portrait and fine-art photography names, film or digital.) They do 35mm C41 or BW development and 16mpx scans for about $30 / roll and deliver gorgeous color-corrected results. And if there's a specific look / color you prefer, they'll gladly talk with you about how to achieve it--just call and ask.

The FIND lab is another great choice: they offer a development + scan + critique service in which they'll offer you helpful frame-by-frame commentary to go along with your color-corrected scans.

Good luck!
Phil4All Photography said:
I have a bad feeling about this question, but here it goes ...

I have never shot film I'm 25 and I've only shot digital. I'm obsessed with film photography, though, and the more I get involved with the art of photography, the more I've come to the realization that digital photography is inferior. Of course, as a professional, to shoot film in this day and age is fairly impractical. I'm not trying to spark up a debate between the 2, but I just had a few questions. I've found a few cheap Pentax K1000's on eBay that are in good condition, and I want to start shooting.

I live in Cape May and there are no longer any photo labs. To my understanding, you can scan negatives once the film has been developed, but there's no other way to scan the film, correct? The film has to be developed first?

Thank you you for the responses.
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