[stevebrot]

You can, in effect, do either shutter or aperture priority with a K1000

Obviously you have never seen one. Rest of comment ignored.


Steve

[gofour3]

In terms of exposure, I have to say that it wasn't the years of b&w in the darkroom that taught me exposure accuracy. You could be all over the place (well, somewhat) and make up for a lot on the back end. Kodachrome taught me exposure. Well, it taught me to bracket :-)



I'm not so sure about that: if you bought your film camera to shoot Kodachrome, or any of the other recently (or soon-to-be) discontinued films, that camera is already obsolete.

Why would you need/want a FF DSLR for a photography class?

Paul

Older films that are being discontinued are being replaced with newer types of 35mm film, which work on any old 35mm film camera. So nothing is obsolete, you are just using different films. Example Kodak Ektar, its new & very good and becoming very popular.

As for digital I think there are going to be big changes in the mid range market, where most photography schools concentrate their courses on. You can already see it in the streets and on TV. I see more and more point & shoot/mini DSLR cameras replacing the bigger APS-C ones. A lot of folks don’t need/care/understand the more complicated DSLR APS-C cameras and also don’t want to sit in front of a computer and manipulate their photos afterwards. The next time they are in the market for a digital camera they will switch to one of these smaller cameras and skip the post processing.

There goes a big chunk of your Digital Photography course market. Film is a more stable media and it’s not going to drastically change or go away. So it makes sense to teach Photography basics on a stable platform, which mid range digital is not.

Phil

[stevebrot]

Why would you need/want a FF DSLR for a photography class?

You wouldn't. That is the point.


Steve

[stevebrot]

Yes it has, so let’s talk about Kodachrome! I also got my last nine rolls back from Dwayne’s this past Tuesday. Boy do I love that film and will truly miss it. I shot the nine rolls in Buenos Aires in late October and the weather was nice and sunny (their spring), so it was perfect conditions for Kodachrome. I just shipped the film from BA to Dwayne’s, to avoid going through airport security with it on the way home.

Phil.

How about that Kodachrome, eh?


I was scanning the first of my final two rolls last night and it struck me again how similar the results are to what I get with Ektar. Kodak may well have killed Kodachrome (and probably rightly so), but at least they gave us a comparable product at about half the price. Yes, film is dead! That is why Kodak is releasing new product and even releasing it in large and medium format!


Steve

[magkelly]

I bought my first DSLR and a decent lens for under $100. Granted that was steal but actually there are DSLR's on CL all the time now for under $200. I am a student and as much as I also enjoy using film the costs associated with using film are at least 3X what it costs me to use my *ist. With older DSLR's regularly selling for under $200 I don't think that a K1000 is all that practical anymore to be honest.

Unless I send away (and I'll still spend basically the same to get film shipped to me anyway) I am still paying about $4-6 a roll locally. If I shoot 6 rolls of film a week on average that's $24-36 a week just to buy it. Add processing chemicals and/or school lab fees and I'd be spending another $30 getting them developed. Add it up, that's well over $200 a month just to take pictures for class.

Over a semester a student can spend well over $1200 just to do classroom assignments in film. That's an average cost that I was quoted at the school I was thinking of attending, a local junior college that only does film. That's just for buying the film and some chemicals, paper you might need, etc. They don't furnish all of that for you and that's not including the $250 per semester for lab fees, $200 for books, or the tuition for the classes which would set me back another $1500 at least.

I totaled it up and I think I came up with something like $3200 plus per semester to take Photography 101 and Photography 102. Sounds cheap to some I am sure, but that's a lot of debt to take on or money spent out of pocket for most students who are funding their own education. Add in the fact that you can't just take photography at most colleges you also have to add academics to that and you can be talking 6-10K a year or even more.

Me, I'd rather spend $200 for an older DSLR, or even $500 for a new one than spend $2000 on film over the course of 2 semesters of non-digital work. Think about it. You could have that decent DSLR and a whole kit of used lenses for what you'd pay in film costs in 10 months and you'd have the added benefit of being able to take as many pics as you wanted for your own use as well with nothing else by way of major expense while you study.

I love my SLR's, all of them, but I do see the very real advantages of using digital versus using film. The expenses of using film may seem easier because they are spread over time, but really you're not spending anything less than you would be buying used digital equipment or even new equipment like say a K-x which is pretty reasonably priced for the camera it is. Entry level DSLR's don't cost 2K anymore and the 6MP's can be had for what it sometimes costs to buy a K1000 or an AE1 or whatever.

$500 for a K-x with a kit lens is maybe 3 months worth of film costs. Not even one whole semester's worth of supply $$$. So who's paying for the second? Or the third or fourth if you have to go for 4 years? You are.

I had enough trouble paying for books and ramen noodles when I was in college the first time, seriously. That's a lot of money saved by going digital! Again, I am not knocking film, but with $150 6MP used DSLR's out there it's not THAT cheap to go the film route when you think about it.

[GeneV]

How about that Kodachrome, eh?


I was scanning the first of my final two rolls last night and it struck me again how similar the results are to what I get with Ektar. Kodak may well have killed Kodachrome (and probably rightly so), but at least they gave us a comparable product at about half the price. Yes, film is dead! That is why Kodak is releasing new product and even releasing it in large and medium format!


Steve

Agreed. That was my first thought when I scanned a roll of Ektar.

[tibbitts]

Obviously you have never seen one. Rest of comment ignored.


Steve

You can also, in effect, do aperture or shutter priority with a spotmatic, as I did, for many years. No, not like in a dslr (or a film camera like the canon a-1), where you have a choice of true aperture or shutter priority, or program mode. But the only difference between true aperture/shutter priority and what you do with a spotmatic (let's say the F, to avoid discussions about stop-down metering, and relate more closely to the revered K1000), is whether you or the camera physically provides the second of the two inputs required. Either way, you provide one input, and the meter somehow expresses what it thinks that second unit should be. In true aperture/shutter priorty, the camera physically sets the second value for you; in a K1000/spotmatic it doesn't. But that's a trivial difference. When I moved from the spotmatic to the a-1, I didn't change the process of selecting exposure in any important way. Although I was now sometimes officially using aperture or shutter priority, it was the same process and ended up with the same result. Same for the DSLR - you still think in terms of selecting either an aperture or shutter speed to meet your requirement, and somehow figure out the second value, with or without the meter's help.

Paul

[tibbitts]

I bought my first DSLR and a decent lens for under $100. Granted that was steal but actually there are DSLR's on CL all the time now for under $200. I am a student and as much as I also enjoy using film the costs associated with using film are at least 3X what it costs me to use my *ist. With older DSLR's regularly selling for under $200 I don't think that a K1000 is all that practical anymore to be honest.

Unless I send away (and I'll still spend basically the same to get film shipped to me anyway) I am still paying about $4-6 a roll locally. If I shoot 6 rolls of film a week on average that's $24-36 a week just to buy it. Add processing chemicals and/or school lab fees and I'd be spending another $30 getting them developed. Add it up, that's well over $200 a month just to take pictures for class.

Over a semester a student can spend well over $1200 just to do classroom assignments in film. That's an average cost that I was quoted at the school I was thinking of attending, a local junior college that only does film. That's just for buying the film and some chemicals, paper you might need, etc. They don't furnish all of that for you and that's not including the $250 per semester for lab fees, $200 for books, or the tuition for the classes which would set me back another $1500 at least.

I totaled it up and I think I came up with something like $3200 plus per semester to take Photography 101 and Photography 102. Sounds cheap to some I am sure, but that's a lot of debt to take on or money spent out of pocket for most students who are funding their own education. Add in the fact that you can't just take photography at most colleges you also have to add academics to that and you can be talking 6-10K a year or even more.

Me, I'd rather spend $200 for an older DSLR, or even $500 for a new one than spend $2000 on film over the course of 2 semesters of non-digital work. Think about it. You could have that decent DSLR and a whole kit of used lenses for what you'd pay in film costs in 10 months and you'd have the added benefit of being able to take as many pics as you wanted for your own use as well with nothing else by way of major expense while you study.

I love my SLR's, all of them, but I do see the very real advantages of using digital versus using film. The expenses of using film may seem easier because they are spread over time, but really you're not spending anything less than you would be buying used digital equipment or even new equipment like say a K-x which is pretty reasonably priced for the camera it is. Entry level DSLR's don't cost 2K anymore and the 6MP's can be had for what it sometimes costs to buy a K1000 or an AE1 or whatever.

$500 for a K-x with a kit lens is maybe 3 months worth of film costs. Not even one whole semester's worth of supply $$$. So who's paying for the second? Or the third or fourth if you have to go for 4 years? You are.

I had enough trouble paying for books and ramen noodles when I was in college the first time, seriously. That's a lot of money saved by going digital! Again, I am not knocking film, but with $150 6MP used DSLR's out there it's not THAT cheap to go the film route when you think about it.

Thinking back to photography in college, the next courses in the program (I stopped after the first one) required 4x5. Swings, tilts, film holders, etc. Is that still the case? That adds considerably to those material costs. Of course today there are digital backs, and some degree of perspective control via software, but maybe they don't allow you to use those, either.

I'm not going to college now, but am paying tuition, so I'm sympathetic to the costs. Does your school have a good placement record? What kind of jobs are the graduates doing?

Paul

[stevebrot]

Over a semester a student can spend well over $1200 just to do classroom assignments in film.

Damn, that is a lot of money. I can see how it might add up if you shot a roll a day. Even if you bulk load the cheap stuff (about $1.50 a roll), the cost would be about $11 a week multiplied by 15 weeks, you come up with...maybe I got my math wrong?

Ummm...let me work that backwards. $1200 over 15 weeks at $1.50 per roll...that comes out to 7.6 rolls of film (274 exposures) a day shooting 7 days a week.

Darkroom chemicals are included as part of the lab fee right? If not, $0.35 per roll (FG-7 and generic stop/fix) should cover the cost of processing chemicals (about $40/semester)

I did not include the price of paper for prints, so it is probably safe to add another $100 per semester for photo paper.

Am I missing something? Oh, yeah...throw in $50 for a manual camera (not K1000) or borrow one from Dad.

That being said, there is still no doubt you could probably get a used dSLR for a few hundred dollars, but it would not be the fully manual camera your instructor requires and when the course is done, you still would know nothing about film photography. Remember, film photo skills transfer easily to digital, but the opposite is less true. But just for giggles, lets consider the cost of doing this digital assuming you have nothing.

Used dSLR w/ kit lens $200 (it was a bad week on CL)
Adobe Photoshop CS5 Teacher/Student edition $200
Decent photo quality printer $200
Ink and Paper $75+/semester (yes, the cost per print is only a little lower than for silver-based, the cost is in the ink)

And the total is...$675 for the first semester and only paper and ink after that except to upgrade to CS6 in another 10 months.

Looking good! Did I forget anything...Oh, yes. Throw in a laptop capable of supporting CS5.

Don't get the wrong impression here. I would be the last person to suggest that film is less expensive per exposure than digital or that it will even cost less per year if you are a dedicated, though careful shooter. I am just wanting to point out that it expensive no matter how you mix the parts.

I for one, have a heavy investment in film equipment and about the same in digital. Fortunately my needs for both approaches overlap to a degree. I primarily use a hybrid process for film so the computer, software, and printer do double duty. Ditto for most of my lenses. The scanners (yes, that means more than one), cost me about what a new K5 would run. That cost erased whatever economy I might have managed by the lower cost of cameras. I won't even talk about costs for the large format kit...


Steve

[tibbitts]

If the school supplies a darkroom, it probably supplies computers and software too. When I took photography in college it was much more convenient to use my own darkroom, but I wasn't required to have one - I could have used the school's darkroom (after waiting, and waiting...) It's probably the same story with CS5.

Paul

[GhoSStrider]

How about that Kodachrome, eh?

I was scanning the first of my final two rolls last night and it struck me again how similar the results are to what I get with Ektar.

I see comments like this a lot, but I haven't been satisfied with Ektar at all. Probably my biggest problem is that the skies are way too cyan for me.

I also dislike that it's a print film. A big part of the fun of shooting slides is seeing them on a light table. There's nothing that compares to seeing a bright, well exposed 'chrome on a light table.

I'm glad Ektar is popular and that it will let Kodak know that there are still film photogs out there, but alas, it doesn't work for me.

[GeneV]

I see comments like this a lot, but I haven't been satisfied with Ektar at all. Probably my biggest problem is that the skies are way too cyan for me.

I also dislike that it's a print film. A big part of the fun of shooting slides is seeing them on a light table. There's nothing that compares to seeing a bright, well exposed 'chrome on a light table.

I'm glad Ektar is popular and that it will let Kodak know that there are still film photogs out there, but alas, it doesn't work for me.

I'd be with you on that caveat if there were an E6 processor around the corner--or anywhere in town. I used to love slides. Now, scanning puts the negative on the light table pretty quickly, and for the difference I'm happy to save about $8 and several days on the processing. (Ironic, because it used to be that slides cost less, in total, to process)

[eddie1960]

I'd be with you on that caveat if there were an E6 processor around the corner--or anywhere in town. I used to love slides. Now, scanning puts the negative on the light table pretty quickly, and for the difference I'm happy to save about $8 and several days on the processing. (Ironic, because it used to be that slides cost less, in total, to process)

I'm with you, and i'll add Negs have more exposure latitude than slides
But I love the slide colour (I am more of a Fuji shooter though so I can stillget Provia and Velvie for now (though fuji has been on a run of killing films so who knows how long that will last)
I must admit though I did love kodachrome, but the wait for delivery killed it for me, I'm lucky enough to still have quick E6 service in Toronto

[GeneV]

I'm with you, and i'll add Negs have more exposure latitude than slides
But I love the slide colour (I am more of a Fuji shooter though so I can stillget Provia and Velvie for now (though fuji has been on a run of killing films so who knows how long that will last)
I must admit though I did love kodachrome, but the wait for delivery killed it for me, I'm lucky enough to still have quick E6 service in Toronto

The extra dynamic range of negative films, especially B&W, also offers an advantage over digital that is not present to such an extent with slides.

[eddie1960]

The extra dynamic range of negative films, especially B&W, also offers an advantage over digital that is not present to such an extent with slides.

Exactly (though a K5 does address a lot of this but is hardly a student camera)
not to mention that a well produced Silver Gelatin Print (or even better Palladium Print) looks far better than anything I've seen done Digitally (and if you are selling them they also command a premium from collectors even though they cost about the same to produce)
I got back to film specifically for the b/w but the slides are a nice side benefit (Even with all the plugins nothing seems to match a Velvia Slide printed as a Cibachrome - boy I'm starting to sound like an audiophile talking about Vinyl)