[ffking]

For me image capture is the motivator, the medium perhaps a little less important - but I was in my mid 20s before I could afford a camera (though I'd long wanted one, I know it was an SLR or nothing) - perhaps that would have been even later with digital . I think that auto-exposure was the thing that made photography really accessible to ordinary people, but also most of us here grew up with everything else being manual - and that gives you a much better understanding of what you're doing, which in turn lets us be in charge of modern DSLRs and not let them boss us around - and that sense of critical involvement in the decision making that went into a good image is part of the satisfaction for me. It's quite possible that I'd have never got that sense if my first camera had been a modern DSLR - my kids all enjoy taking pictures, but I have to give them long lectures on how to get what you want, not always listened to

[Dartmoor Dave]

For me it was discovering what Kodachrome could do that really made the photography bug bite. After a couple of years of cheap drugstore prints as a beginner, I knew that I wasn't getting any better and didn't see how I could ever get the sort of results that I wanted. Then I tried that first roll of Kodachrome, and wow! Suddenly I was getting photos that actually looked like what I had in my mind when I pressed the shutter.

I was always hopeless in the darkroom, but luckily I used to work with an old guy called Ben Redshaw (long gone now) who was retired from a career in the lab at one of the big London newspapers. What that guy could do with a negative was pure artistry, and he definitely made my B&W stuff look much better than my actual shooting skills at the time deserved.

For me, Kodachrome was always the gold standard and always will be. Shooting such an unforgiving film with fully manual cameras certainly forced you to learn how to get your exposure right, and I think that even in this digital age beginners would learn a lot of things a lot better if they shot some slides.

[Kerrowdown]

Imagine not having to wait a week or later a day to see what we had done

That's why we all developed mobile makeshift darkrooms out of hotel bathrooms, or on bigger jobs runners took the film back to base and a team there got stuck into it.

Whilst not as immediate as digital, i.e. uploaded over the wire or by some passing cloud, still stuff had to be done quickly.

[Not a Number]

The 1980s got pretty well automated. Program modes on cameras. Auto-focus including Point-n-shoots. One hour film processing locations as common as Starbuck's is today. The one hour mini-labs is probably one of the reason for explosion of sales of SLRs and point-n-shoots. Let's not forget the disposable cameras too - even underwater versions.

[RobA_Oz]

I’m another for whom the attraction of photography was the ability to take then make your images in the darkroom. Starting with a 120 film Isola in the early 1960s, no enlarger was needed to show off my work – the small sized direct prints were probably a good thing, to disguise the resulting technical flaws.

When I started full-time employment in 1970, I rekindled my interest in photography after my first daughter arrived. She had fixer in her veins, from accompanying me into the darkroom almost from the start. Although I shot mostly in monochrome, some colour neg and reversal extended my interest until digital came along. I even tried my hand at developing and printing in colour – Cibachrome was amazing.

I still miss the darkroom, though I’m glad I don’t have to risk having chemicals like uranium intensifiers around any more. Automation? It’s something of a devil’s bargain in most things – convenient, but de-skilling and stultifying enquiry (the “black box” effect) to some extent.

[Mikesul]

In 1963 I was doing some physiograms, using a 35mm camera. I needed to see the results within minutes, not days!

So I used orthochromatic film, (insensitive to red), and cut the film into strips about 2 inches long. Then developed and stopped, (not completely fixed), each strip immediately after exposure.

This worked every well, for this highly specialised form of photography. Lots more here:

Physiograms

Physiogram techniques

Original Physiograms

Great story. I just remember the long waits and how magical it seemed when they could get it done in one day and then in an hour. Perspective.

[ChrisPlatt]

It's hard to believe I have enjoyed photography for nearly fifty years.

A Canon A-1, my second 35mm SLR, was far too automated for me.
I traded it in and opted for mostly manual mechanical cameras after that.
As AF and AE etc. became commonplace I lost interest in the new models.

I can't relate to automation and digital. Fortunately they do not affect
and in no way discourage my love of classic film cameras and lenses,
film, developing and especially wet printing in the darkroom.

Chris

---

Last edited by ChrisPlatt; 07-08-2018 at 10:01 AM.

[normhead]

I'm totally geared to easiest and most efficient. I want images. Playing with and figuring out camera is less important. Regardless of what you might say about the charm of film, I frequently come in the house with 300 or more images. I can't do with film what I can do with digital. Others mileage may vary, I really only compare film to my K-1 images. Slow FPS, lots of single frame images. A K-3 is all tech that wasn't available with film. 8 FP, longer reach for for the same focal length, more resolution in the crop area, as good IQ as any film camera using A{S-c. AF. Maybe that stuff doesn't interest you, but that's OK. It's for those of us who aren't locked into a 100 year old way of doing things. I tend to think of my K-1 the way I used to think of Medium Format.

But then my buddies and myself in film school used to practice pushing our frame rate to darn close to 4 FPS hand cranked. You held down the shutter button and the shutter fired as soon as the crank had advanced the film without lifting your foinger off the shutter release. You had to practice so your hand advancing the film didn't cause camera shake. SO bottom line, I was shooting then as I do now when it was necessary. It's just a lot easier now. I realize a lot fo people never went through that kind of training, but if you were planning to be a pro, you did that kind os stuff. It could get you job in a news room.

If you were going to do studio work with immobile subjects, view cameras were for that, not 35mm. Even the news guys for stationary subjects used 5x7 viewfinder cameras with bellows to focus. For most people, a 35mm was convenient, not great IQ.

[Wheatfield]

The 1980s got pretty well automated. Program modes on cameras. Auto-focus including Point-n-shoots. One hour film processing locations as common as Starbuck's is today. The one hour mini-labs is probably one of the reason for explosion of sales of SLRs and point-n-shoots. Let's not forget the disposable cameras too - even underwater versions.

The 1980s answered pretty much every objection that customers had to buying more advanced cameras.

I was working as the quality control manager for a major lab from early 1982 until late 1984. One week we had a bunch of seminars with the people from Kodak, who were surveying labs to see what the major customer driven problems we were seeing.

The biggies were misloading the film, opening the camera back prior to rewinding, wrong ASA/ISO setting, poor exposure, and poor focus. For Kodak, the end result of this was the APS camera system, which failed in the marketplace.

However, what we did see was 35mm cameras popping up with automatic exposure ( already in place by then, but they got better), DX encoding for film speed setting, and in the mid 1980s, automatic focus.

My 1986, the 35mm camera in all of its guises, were answering most of the objections that customers had. We still had film coming in that had been fogged due to opening the back, but better anti halation layers on the film meant that the entire roll wasn't necessarily lost.

This combined with the 1980s being a time of pretty impressive economic growth, and the one hour labs being all about near instant gratification, and cameras sold like hotcakes. It was a good time to be in the retail camera business, but as a lot of pro photographers found, it was not that great a time to be a pro shooter. All that automation led to what became known as weekend warriors eating into the market.

Ironically, the photographer I mentored with when I started shooting pro, and I was in about grade 9 at the time, was very much a weekend warrior. He ended up being put out of that part of the business by weekend shooters diluting the marketplace. By the early 1990s he was pretty much done.

[Mikesul]

The 1980s answered pretty much every objection that customers had to buying more advanced cameras.

I was working as the quality control manager for a major lab from early 1982 until late 1984. One week we had a bunch of seminars with the people from Kodak, who were surveying labs to see what the major customer driven problems we were seeing.

The biggies were misloading the film, opening the camera back prior to rewinding, wrong ASA/ISO setting, poor exposure, and poor focus. For Kodak, the end result of this was the APS camera system, which failed in the marketplace.

However, what we did see was 35mm cameras popping up with automatic exposure ( already in place by then, but they got better), DX encoding for film speed setting, and in the mid 1980s, automatic focus.

My 1986, the 35mm camera in all of its guises, were answering most of the objections that customers had. We still had film coming in that had been fogged due to opening the back, but better anti halation layers on the film meant that the entire roll wasn't necessarily lost.

This combined with the 1980s being a time of pretty impressive economic growth, and the one hour labs being all about near instant gratification, and cameras sold like hotcakes. It was a good time to be in the retail camera business, but as a lot of pro photographers found, it was not that great a time to be a pro shooter. All that automation led to what became known as weekend warriors eating into the market.

Ironically, the photographer I mentored with when I started shooting pro, and I was in about grade 9 at the time, was very much a weekend warrior. He ended up being put out of that part of the business by weekend shooters diluting the marketplace. By the early 1990s he was pretty much done.

In re your sig line: said it before but it bears repeating - Glad to have you back.

[Wheatfield]

In re your sig line: said it before but it bears repeating - Glad to have you back.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

[HoutHans]

For me it was the darkroom. Seeing the image appear magically with my father using Ilford film and paper. Later i used Kodak Technical Pan 2415 (hypersensitized) for astrophotography and was able to create some of that magic myself. The film was ridiculously expensive for a student, so I shot very carefully. That obviously changed with digital, but I'd day that I'm still a cautious shooter and I enjoy M mode with a manual lens a lot. At this moment our kids are starting to develop an interest in imaging, so we try to get them to identify nice images and look for purposeful images. Not sure how (or if) they're getting into photography differently in a digital world.

[gofour3]

For me, Kodachrome was always the gold standard and always will be.

Ditto! The "Holy Grail" of photography for me, nothing will ever come close...

Phil.

[Rondec]

I never had a darkroom. Just shot a lot of film and dropped it off to be developed.

The biggest thing that helped me become a better photographer (I'm still not a great one), was having the Exif of my photos after the fact. It was always hard for me to remember what I had done, either with photos that worked out or the hundreds that didn't. Being able to have the camera document the aperture and other settings opened my eyes to a lot of the things I was screwing up.

But photography is still a challenge and having automation doesn't really change that fact. There are millions more bad photos taken every day than there were in the 70s...

[dadipentak]

Tip of the hat to you darkroom veterans but there was no freaking way I was going to go into a dark room filled with chemicals to do my own processing so it was only after the advent of digital that I was able to pursue my interest in photography. I don't really think that I'd be much less of a hack if at this point if I'd had film processing experience.