Originally posted by 24thNomad However, I just have a vast curiosity with trying new things in general; especially in photography.
That is all the justification you need. It’s not like film equipment of good quality is expensive.
But it isn’t just composition you have to see. In fact, the tight feedback loop of digital gives me ways to explore composition, doing in an hour what used to take a month of experimentation. My composition is better with digital.
You also have to see tonality. Film is narrow, and you have to clip highlights and shadows and as part of the seeing. New digital stuff is so broad that it brings up new strategies, such as holding shutter speed and aperture at optimal settings for the desired look, and the adjust iso to get the desired exposure.
One has to learn how to look at the world and predict how it will look, based on a calibrated mental model of the film and display medium. We used to do it with slides—hyper-narrow, viewed directly with no possibility of post processing, and exposure latitude measured in fractions of a stop. It was easy to get blown highlights, sooty shadows, and nothing in between. No photoshop to the rescue, either.
And we used to just not miss. When I did a wedding back in the 70’s, I used a Mamiya C3 with a Sunpak 611 potato-masher flash. I’d walk in with two Pro Packs of Vericolor Type S Professional. That’s ten rolls: 120 pictures. And I would deliver a proof book with 120 unique photos in it. I checked the flash synch setting before every photo. I could reload film in that beast in 30 seconds. I could hold the camera in my right hand, the flash in my left, and aim the light however it needed to be aimed. Negative film was hard to overexpose, so dress texture would be fine, but black tuxes could become a black hole. That’s what film is like. It’s demanding and fun, but to be honest I can do without the stress. We didn’t spray, but we certainly did pray.
Now, when I shoot film, which I do for fun, I make a digital photo of the same scene as a backup, unless it’s an easy place to visit again. But for the very few pay gigs that come my way these days, I’m digital all the way. But I still take no more than a quarter of the pictures I see other photographers make. My wife will make twice as many photos at a wedding, and she’ll spend four times as long editing them, too.
Rick “whose smallest film format in common use is 6x7” Denney
---------- Post added 04-05-18 at 03:44 PM ----------
Originally posted by Ranchu Negative film has 15 stops of DR, including an S curve, there's no digital that can accomplish that. Even if there was a digital camera that actually produced 15 stops, adding the S curve would add midtone contrast. Negative film decreases midtone contrast .7
What negative film?
I’ve never gotten more that 10-11 stops from color negative film, at least with tones that you could separate without photoshop and a $75 laser scan. And I have shot...a lot of color negative film. With C-prints, you won’t see those 10 stops. Cibachrome came closer, but the it was a positive process and I’ve never gotten more than 6 stops of subject brightness range in a color slide.
You can get 15 stops from black and white, but only with slower film and only with particular developers (Pyrocat, for example). I’ve done that for more than a couple of weeks, too.
But if you want a print with good microcontrast, you have to separate those mid-tones.
The 645Z has 14.7 stops of dynamic range and it’s linear, meaning you can do whatever you want with it.
I still use film and have a freezer full of it. But for me, the format size has to have the advantage to overcome the other constraints. 6x7 is on that boundary, 4x5 for sure, particularly with the image management capabilities of large format. But if they ever made a true 4x5 sensor usable in my view camera, I will want it.
I shot this on 6x12 Velvia. I missed the exposure by about a quarter of a stop. It’s fine, but the shadow of the tree lost detail because of it. And that was on an overcast day with flat lighting. Negative film would have held it, but not with that intensity of red.
Japanese Maple, 6x12 Velvia, f/16 at 1 second, 121mm f/8 Schneider Super Angulon, Sinar F2 with Sinar roll film holder. Scanned in a Nikon 9000ED, but those shadow details are gone on the transparency, too.
Rick “the Zone System works to 10 stops, 12 if you can get your N-2 processing dialed in” Denney
---------- Post added 04-05-18 at 04:02 PM ----------
Some folks are conflating camera automation with digital. Camera automation is what keeps people from learning about exposure. Put a digital camera in M and adjust aperture and shutter speed to “center the needle”—that’s how one learns about exposure.
The extension of that leads to metering 5 or 10 parts of the scene with a 1-degree spot meter to fit them into the sensitivity of the film. That can be done with digital, too.
Program automation existed before digital cameras. I had two film cameras with Program exposure automation for a total of about 15 years before I bought my first digital camera in 2003, and that was a Canon 10D, so it’s not like it was last week. My Canon T90 or EOS Elan II didn’t require any knowledge of exposure to get good ones. It helped, but it wasn’t necessary.
Rick “whose wife has good timing but no head for the technical stuff—guess which I’d rather have” Denney