Hello Steve,
I’m Jali, I’ve been shooting film (constantly) for almost over a year since my rediscovery of my old analog SLR. Unlike many photography enthusiasts, I never tasted the wonder of DSLR and simply won’t convert to digital for an uncanny reason: I don’t like cameras that depend on batteries.
I prefer the mighty mechanicals, maybe because I’m too paranoid to depend on batteries.
Almost all of my cameras are meterless or the lightmeter is broken, so 90% of my images are taken based on the sunny 16 rules.
Recently I’ve been shooting in a low light condition with ISO 100-200 films, using various cameras & lenses to sharpen the sunny 16 rules. It’s really amazing how simple and powerful, yet unpopular these rules are. My experiment has its own cost: Hundreds of unsuccessful frames, most of them are great moments I’ve captured. At first I feel really disappointed, but then I remember what Henri Cartier-Bresson said: “Your first 10.000 photographs are your worst”, those words just keep me shooting more and more. I’m still far from my first 10.000 frames, but I’ll never get tired clicking the shutter button.
Below are some of the photos of my sunny 16 low light experiment. The first and second pictures (Jali01, Jali02) are taken with a Nikon F2, Nikkor 28/f2.8 AI and a cheap film Lucky Super 200, the third one (Jali03) is using the same camera and lens but with Kodak ColorPlus 200.
Feel free to browse my gallery at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jalijalilagi
–
–
Keep doing what you love and do so well. I use both digital and film.Film way more fun! The cameras are all so much easier and don’t read “Battery Depleted”. Yes I shoot way more images with the digital. Film i keep a record usually done sometime AFTER exposing,a small sketch of the subject! On digital i seldom remember the images..I shoot about 2~4 rolls a month. Seeing my Canon Ae-1P plus lenses was a freebie, film bought cheap or given to me, how will i ever say it’s comparable in price to a DSLR. If film and processing/scanning brought to cost, a comparable rig with same lenses, flash, filters would take about 7 years to achieve! i am on my 5th free PC! i have had to add 2 extra outside drives to store images from digital.
Like your images. Sharpness, exact color and other “Rules” are outmoded concepts and not a necessity for good images!
@David, sorry for late reply. Yeah been shooting more with DSLR’s. Even got an impromptu shot published on the front page of my local newspaper of a seal (which is very rare here) in my local harbour, but my X1 still go’s with me everywhere 🙂
.
Seal – in your local harbour? ..It’s that Leica Ambassador job ..he takes it very seriously ..and expected you to use the X1.
Lol
@ David
“Anyone can ponder as long as they like before shooting any digital photo: no-one’s forced to shoot at breakneck speed, or 9fps, or to keep zooming in and out. But a zoom gives a choice of framing.”
this is where we differ. It is one thing to say this and another to do it. Give a MKII to a photographer with 16 gig card and send him to an event and he comes back with probably minimum 600 pics – even a film shooter (when using a MKII) will do this. I am not saying out of these 600 there wont be good ones, I am sure there will be. It’s just that the thinking changes once you know you have unlimited frames available. Maybe you are the exception, there certainly are exceptions. As a general rule though, have large memory card = hundreds of pictures, most of which are deleted and even fewer thought about in the way you describe so eloquently above. With digital, everyone is a photographer now. Go to an event and there are hundreds of ‘photographers’ firing away hoping for that one shot. Digital has lowered the barrier to entry. these guys can hit the one lucky frame out of 600 but that is not skill and most are happy to admit they have limited knowledge about photography but maintain that in the digital age you don’t need to – “the camera does the work”.
Where i fundamentally differ from you is that you seem suggest that whether someone has to wait a long time and put a lot of work and money in to get a result or he can get the result cheap, fast and without the work – the amount of thought he puts in is the same. With respect, that is simply not true. You can compare against anything in life and that wont hold up. Buying a car vs buying lunch. Choosing to date someone vs choosing to marry them. Buying a house vs renting one. Firing off a digital frame vs a film frame. As you up the cost, the time involved and the consequences of getting it wrong – the more the thinking and analysis deepens (or at least it should). It is human nature and one cannot pretend it is not true. It’s an inconvenient truth if you like. It would be so much more convenient if digital photography did not affect the amount of thought before a shot, but it does. The MKII shooter who takes 600 frames to get 25 keepers is testament to this.
.
“..Digital has lowered the barrier to entry..” ..It was ever thus ..thank goodness and thank enterprise!
In 1912 proper cameras were mainly big, heavy mahogany contraptions which you lugged about with a tripod to stand them on. Asthmatic Oskar Barnack devised a lightweight POCKET camera which used movie film, and in 1924 the Leitz company started churning them out, and they revolutionised photography: now anyone (who could afford a Leica) could carry a teeny pocket camera and take high quality snapshots – without (gasp!) having studied photography! ..And these “arrivistes” could shoot 36 pictures one after the other, just like that, without having to carefully store away the glass plate they’d recently exposed, and then gingerly insert another.
Now all the (moneyed) plebs could all start taking photos, horror of horrors!
But the Kodak Brownie had already arrived: “You push the button, we do the rest” was Eastman’s slogan, and you could shoot a whole ROLL of film, post the camera and film back to Kodak, and it was posted back to you complete with the pictures you’d shot, with a brand new roll of film inside!
Everyone with no talent could shoot a whole load of pictures of whatever they wanted, and with no thought at all!
And that’s how we’ve got our visual records of the 20th century: millions of people, with no thought or training, could immortalise moments of glee, pleasure, cruelty, harm, despair, joy, veneration, delight, or the commonplace, the personal, the historic; the natural world, the manufactured and manipulated world, the important and the unimportant.
Who cares whether they understood – or not – the “finer points” of photography?
Before this small-camera revolution, family portraits were the prerogative of the rich, who commissioned them from a small number of talented people who could manipulate oil paint. With pocket cameras, everyone could shoot family snaps and keep a record of who they were, what they did, and who their parents and their children were, and are.
Would you like to forgo all this, and limit the number of pictures people can shoot, so that they think long, hard and seriously about each individual portentous photograph? Think what we’d have lost!
As far as I’m concerned, the more shots the merrier! Stills, movies ..as many photographs as possible!
I don’t care if no-one knows what “reciprocity failure” is, or doesn’t understand that you get the same exposure if you shoot at 1/30th and f16 or at 1/500th and f4. I’m all for as many people as possible taking as many pictures as possible, and if automated cameras make this nice and easy, then let’s have as many automated cameras as possible ..cheaply, and for everyone!
That doesn’t mean that if I want to think long and hard about which speed and aperture to use, then I mustn’t do so! ..It means that people are free to DO EITHER. To think – or not need to think!
You or I may spend ages pondering over a suitable depth-of-field, suitable ISO, suitable lens (contrasty or ‘soft’, with a filter or without), suitable angle of view, suitable point of view (high, low, waist-level, ground level), appropriate colour saturation, composition, lighting, sharpness, etc ..or just aim and click!
I simply don’t go in for what appears to be your ‘superior’ position of “point-&-clickers know no value, and shoot 600 shots to get only ten good ones”, or that photography’s only for ‘deep thinkers’.
For me, photography’s for everyone! And if simple pocket cameras offer 32 gigabytes of storage and 20x wide-aperture zooms, with self-adjusting HDR and wobble-free low-light capability, without anyone needing to know ANYTHING about photography – yippee!
I really don’t think that photography’s for only an elite of serious, ruminative thinkers. I’m all for taking thousands of shots, and throwing away the ones you don’t want.
That’s what Cartier-Bresson did ..his “famous” shots are the ones he decided were worth keeping: the thousands upon thousands of others, he discarded. That was expensive in his day, of course, but he came from a family with plenty of money, as did Monsieur Lartigue, who also took thousands upon thousands of – wonderful – pics.
Nowadays, we don’t need much money to take thousands of shots and to throw away the ones we don’t like, because we don’t need to buy expensive 36-shot cassettes (or bulk film), and chemicals, and printing paper, and a developing tank, and an enlarger and an enlarging lens ..nor do we need to pay someone else to chemically process our pictures.
I’m glad that photography’s cheap, and that we don’t have to think – if we don’t want to, or we don’t have the knowledge – and that we can shoot 600 pics instead of just a measly 36. I’m glad it’s so quick’n’easy, and I don’t like the idea of a photographic priesthood saying “only we know how to take real photographs, and you know-nothing hoi-polloi are unenlightened idiots”.
Would you suggest that only those people who know about the fabrication methods of LCDs and CMOS – or the molecular chains of Estar film and the production of silver nitrate – should be able to take photographs, because only they truly appreciate the processes involved in photographic imaging? Of course not!
The more photos for everyone the merrier!
You guys are too serious 🙂
This is just about an experiment on sunny 16, a very basic photography technique, on mechanical analog cameras. I’m doing this to preserve the way of the elders, to preserve the knowledge so that our great-great-great-great-great grandchildren will not have to ask: “How the hell they did it with meterless cameras and no autofocus lenses? It’s impossible.”
or:
“Geee…I guess they converted to grayscale in Photoshop to produce black and white pictures. I never knew there was such thing like a black and white film.”
Cheers.
Oh….BTW, my f2 said hello…
[img]http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5182/5812510426_eac1f0e478.jpg[/img]
.
B-but that’s a metering Photomic head!
(..All that the great-great-great-great-great grandchildren need to know is that in England, with ASA/ISO 100 film, it was 1/125th at f5.6.)
Dear David, the lightmeter is broken. Still searching for DE-1 pentaprism to replace the photomic head 🙂
.
Try http://tinyurl.com/6cl2rns
Jali, get a cheap second body and use the head : http://www.secondhandcamera.nl/webpages/Nikon.html
Holland too!
@ David
Comments in caps (for identification and not for shouting purposes! 😉 below:
I think that if people are disposed to learn, they’ll learn – whether with film or a digital camera. If they’re not likely to learn anything from the pics they shoot, then they won’t learn using film, just as they won’t with a digital camera. WITH RESPECT, I DON’T THINK THAT IS TRUE.
Film shots cost more than digital (only 36 on a roll for about £5 or $8, plus processing and printing costs) and so film photographers think a bit more before shooting off a frame – agreed. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the resulting pictures are any better! It just means they’ve been thought about more. ARE YOU SUGGESTING THAT ACTION WITHOUT THINKING RESULTS IN BETTER RESULTS THAT WITH THINKING? I THINK YOU MIGHT WANT TO RECONSIDER THAT. But think about it too long, and the moment’s gone. TRUE, BUT IF YOU DON’T THINK YOU MISS THE MOMENT – OFTEN BECAUSE YOU DON’T ANTICIPATE PROPERLY (IT GOES BOTH WAYS).
Let’s look at what you gain with a digital camera:
1. Set the ISO for each shot. No longer stuck with ISO 400 or 100 or thereabouts, or whatever you’ve put in the camera. FAIR POINT.
2. With the generally smaller sensors – than a frame of 35mm film – lenses can be made smaller than for 35mm ..and huge (..I know, I know: DJDLV and others don’t like zoom lenses..) ..huge zoom ranges can be accommodated in a single small lens. The advantages of that are (a) no need to carry an assortment of different lenses, (b) no time wasted while you change lenses ..see it and shoot it! WELL, I SHOOT MOSTLY WITH ONE LENS SO THIS IS NOT REALLY A CONCERN FOR ME. YOU ALSO LOSE TIME CHANGING LENSES, YOU WILL BE AMAZED AT HOW CREATIVE A HUMAN BEING CAN BE WITH LIMITED OPTIONS.
(2a. Yes, I know: “Don’t use a zoom; take two paces forward instead”. And if you’re at the edge of a lake? ..at the edge of a canyon? ..standing on a balcony? ..riding on a bus? ..sitting on a boat? ..then what..? Don’t take the picture you really want to shoot?) TRUE AND THIS IS A HUGE ADVANTAGE OF DSLRS ALTHOUGH IT IS ONE ADVANTAGE AND MUST BE WEIGHED AGAINST EVERYTHING ELSE. TO BE FAIR THOUGH, WHILE YOU ARE LOOKING ACROSS THE LAKE YOU MAY BE MISSING THE SHOT OF A LIFETIME BELOW YOU. JUST SAYING.
3. I believe that people DO learn from easily shooting two dozen digital shots and looking at them afterwards (and deleting bad ones) ..”chimping” as it’s derogatorily called. Why did professionals use Polaroid proofs? To check beforehand what they’d get when they took the actual shot. If the framing’s wrong in the first shot, you can see straight away – we-e-ll, after about 3-6 seconds with the slow-as-an-ox replay of a Leica M9 – and shoot another. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with shooting another. With film, of course, it’d cost a few cents or pence, and you’d be closer to your 36-shot limit before rewinding; with digital, you just lose a little battery charge. WELL, I MUST DIFFER HERE AS DELAYED GRATIFICATION IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST FACTORS BEHIND SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE. YES POLAROIDS WERE USED BUT THEY DID NOT SHOOT THE POLAROID AND THEN 4 FRAMES ALL IN 2 SECONDS. YOU ARE SEEMING TO SUGGEST THAT DIGITAL SHOOTERS LOOK AT AN EVOLVING SCENE, SHOOT A SHOT, REVIEW IT, CONSIDER IT AND THEN SHOOT THE ENLIGHTENED SHOT AFTERWARDS. IN REALITY I THINK YOU WILL FIND MOST DIGITAL SHOOTERS JUST SHOOT ABOUT 4 FRAMES AT A SCENE WITHOUT MUCH THOUGHT GOING INTO EACH SHUTTER RELEASE AND THEN THE “CHIMPING” IS JUST DELETING THE ONES THAT WERE NOT GOOD. WITH RESPECT, THAT IS NOT LEARNING, THAT IS GUESSING.
4. I doubt that hyperactive madcap-Mozart would have stuck with a quill and ink if a faster means to write a music score were available in his day: I think he’d have hammered out his manuscripts with ‘Sibelius’ (the software, not the man) in a fraction of the time. I think Mahler would have done it on his iPad. WELL, THAT IS SPECULATION WHICH MAY BE TRUE OR MAY BE COMPLETELY UNTRUE. IT IS INTERESTING THAT NO MOZARTS HAVE APPEARED IN THE DIGITAL AGE. IF WHAT YOU ARE SAYING IS TRUE, WITH SO MANY PEOPLE HAVING SO MUCH ACCESS TO THE BRILLIANT TECHNOLOGY – WE SHOULD BE INUNDATED WITH QUALITY MUSIC THAT WILL LAST A FEW CENTURIES BUT THE FACT IS, WE ARE NOT.
5. It’s possible to wait and reflect before hitting the email ‘Send’ button, just as I’ve waited and revised and thought a bit before hitting ‘Submit Comment’ here. But it doesn’t have to be the long walk to the post box which offers a chance to reflect and think again. IT IS POSSIBLE BUT I THINK YOU ARE FIND THAT THE LONGER TIME YOU HAVE TO REFLECT, THE BETTER THE DECISIONS.
6. D’you travel with a horse and cart, or d’you take a car, taxi, train, plane? Surely not everything you do is stuck in a time warp, is it? You’re obviously using a computer. You obviously use electricity. I doubt that you coat your own glass plates instead of using pre-coated film. ACTUALLY I AM ALL FOR PROGRESS IF IT LEADS TO A BETTER RESULT, IF IT DOES NOT, I AM HAPPY TO STICK WITH ‘OLD’ TECHNIQUES. I STILL LOOK LEFT AND RIGHT BEFORE I CROSS THE ROAD, THAT IS A PRETTY OLD PRACTICE, I AM SURE YOU USE IT TOO. HOW DO YOU TIE YOU SHOES? STILL THE OLD WAY OF A KNOT? WHY NOT VELCRO OR SOME FANCY PULL STRING? BECAUSE THE NEW WAYS DON’T GIVE A BETTER RESULT – THAT IS WHY PEOPLE STICK WITH CERTAIN ‘OLD WAYS’.
7. Progress, new ways of doing things, have given us ready-coated film instead of brittle glass-plate negatives (..thank you, George Eastman). Progress has given us, and continues to improve, CCD and CMOS sensors (..thank you, Smith and Boyle). You say “..my usual rule of thumb is if something allows you to achieve something faster and with less thinking, it usually leads to a bad result.” Travelling by train, instead of walking, you mean? NO, I STILL THINK WHEN I TRAVEL BY TRAIN. Buying ready-made clothes – or cameras – without having to tediously make your own? PROGRESS IS FINE AS LONG AS IT LEADS TO A BETTER RESULT. WHEN IT DOES NOT LEAD TO A BETTER RESULT (I.E BETTER PICTURES) THEN TO FOLLOW PROGRESS BLINDLY IS NOT ACTUALLY THAT GOOD. TAKE STEVE MCCURRY, I AM ALMOST CERTAIN WHEN HE LOOKS BACK ONE DAY AT ALL THE PHOTOS HE TOOK, HIS BEST WILL BE WITH FILM. IT IS ACTUALLY REALLY ANNOYING THAT THE CRITICAL QUALITY OF FILM PHOTOS ARE BETTER, IT WOULD BE SO MUCH MORE CONVENIENT IF DIGITAL ONES WERE. BUT IS IS CLEAR THAT WITH THE EASE THAT DIGITAL INTRODUCED, A THINKING SKILL WAS LOST AND IT IS THIS THINKING SKILL, THAT MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE.
Stephen, I think you’re sticking in the mud because you’re unwilling to give digital – and those who shoot with digital cameras – a fair assessment. If you really think that slow and awkward’s better, perhaps you’re still shooting Daguerreotypes! HEY, I SHOOT DIGITAL TOO, FOR SOME SITUATIONS, I JUST DON’T LIKE IT AND I PREFER THE RESULTS FROM FILM. A LOT OF OTHER PEOPLE DO TOO.
.
I s’pose we’ll just have to agree to differ.
I’ve been using film now since, er, let me think: 1954. And when digital cameras arrived I really embraced them.
35mm film can be nice and sharp (..with a good lens..) and (..with a good enlarging lens..) can make great prints. Digital may be almost as good.
But I’m not romantic about this change of technology (whereas I am with movies! ..I like to hold a reel of movie film in my hand, not just hold a hard disc or a DVD).
Digipics are quick and easy to shoot, and to look at afterwards. Just because it’s quick doesn’t mean it’s awful. There’s a great deal of accumulated knowledge that can go just as much into ‘quick’n’easy’ digital pics as into pics on film. Which tone (..of light’n’shade..) do I meter for? Where’s the predominant item in my composition? What should I do to stop the sky being bleached out? How long can I stand unobtrusively like this till the man over there moves to just the right position to make a perfect counterpoint to the white wall?
All those questions – and dozens more – are just as valid for digital pics as for film-based pics.
You don’t HAVE to shoot fast with digital: it’s just a tool. And giving instant results can instantly show you faults, and can train your eye just as much as taking the film home, putting it in the tank, developing it, fixing and washing and drying it, sticking it in the enlarger, winding the head up and down, getting your fingers all wet in the chemicals, then hanging up the paper to dry.
The “romanticism” about photos on film, and taking one’s time, and -s-l-o-w-i-n-g- -d-o-w-n- just does nothing for me. (..And I know it’s just as daft for me to be romantic about movies on film, instead of on digital media!..)
Anyone can ponder as long as they like before shooting any digital photo: no-one’s forced to shoot at breakneck speed, or 9fps, or to keep zooming in and out. But a zoom gives a choice of framing.
I think you’re “tilting at windmills” ..I think you may be annoyed with a breed of photographers who may exist only in your thoughts.
I’ve had wonderful pictures from my take-it-slow, one-sheet-at-a-time, focus-upside-down, cloth-over-your-head, tilt-and-swivel monorail. But a good quality pocket digicam with a sharp zoom lens and a large-capacity chip inside sure lets me take pictures anywhere, any time, with instant-check results. And I can still take as -l-o-n-g- as I like over every picture ..or shoot in the instant I see a moment worth keeping.
@Scotty – sorry but that cost analysis does not add up in photography terms. I don’t doubt that Overgaard has had that many shutter actuations however firstly he takes work shops where he no doubt shoots a lot of the same type of shots each time for each work shop (for the purpose of the work shop, not for his own personal use). Secondly, he also has the world’s longest (possibly) review of the M9 and when you undertake such an exercise you no doubt use the camera in a way that someone who is just using it for photography in the normal sense would not. 3rdly, do you know what percentage of the actuations result in actual “keepers”. I would estimate (like most digital shooters) that the percentage is massively smaller than that of film shooters. The reality is that film shooters shoot fewer pictures but get more keepers as a percentage. They take more time than digital shooters, they learn more about light, subject and composition than digital shooters…why? because they have to. Give humans an easy and cheap option and most times they take it – and it does not lead to great work. It is a general rule (I accept there are exceptions). Digital is easy and cheap and most times digital photos are taken with little thought. You need only look at the internet to see that this is true.
Someone said here that the old masters used old technology and that we should embrace new technology and be creative (ala Steve Jobs). Whereas I agree with that principle in the main, you must be careful not to apply that in a blanket format. Just because something is newer, does not make it better. Just because something is faster, it does not make it better. In fact my usual rule of thumb is if something allows you to achieve something faster and with less thinking, it usually leads to a bad result. That is why they have pop ups on computers when you try and delete something which says “Are you sure you want to delete this?”. In other words the computer is saying “You just decided to do something very quickly and I am not sure you have engaged your brain as historically this has been a problem since we introduced the quick and fast delete option. Please engage brain and consider if you really want to do this”. In the old days you would have to physically erase something or burn it and normally that requires some thought and preparation (not usually required these days). Also – tweets get people into trouble all the time because it is (and here we go again) easy and fast and often done with little actual thought. People rarely get into trouble through writing of physical letters – why? Because writing a letter requires time, thought and preparation – you still then have to walk to the post box and many mind has changed during this sobering walk! It is when people “shoot their mouths off at inappropriate times when not thinking” and when they do stupid things like tweet without thinking that they get into the most trouble. Mozart, Bach, Tchaikovsky used ‘antiquated’ methods to compose music and there are few (educated) people that would be bold enough to say that modern music is even close to half as good. Perhaps it is no surprise that these days you can compose music easily and quickly using software and a computer (even a Mac!) and most of it pales in comparison to the classics.
Thinking makes everything better. Shooting film forces you to think and so in turn – the number of photos that you shoot that are good – increases as does your knowledge of light, composition and subject. Film photographers often don’t take pictures of scenes that ‘don’t work’. They have learned the hard way and this has forced them to understand scenes better, when to shoot and when not to shoot. Digital shooters don’t learn this lesson and a scene that is rubbish is often shot by digital shooters who then look at the scene on the back of their cameras, shrug and delete them having learned nothing in the process. They will often go out the next day and shoot the same scene (sigh). That is why at school when you made a mistake you were given lines to do and told to write the word a 100 times. Guess what, you never forgot how to spell that word again. Digital photographers have no equivalent to ‘doing lines’. Film photographers do – it is called time spent scanning and money spent on film and processing. As the adage goes: to really learn something, it must cost you something. Therefore when I hear digital shooters saying : wow, you can shoot all these pictures and it does not cost you anything – I get worried.
I shoot with both digital and film and make no mistake about it, I am a better photographer and a more knowledgeable photographer when I shoot with film. Digital dumbs me down. That said, it is useful in certain scenarios so I use it. I don’t pretend though that it makes me a better photographer.
Whereas I think there are cost savings by using digital, if you factor in the so called digital rot of digital cameras, the actual amount of film that film shooters use, the actual amount of times a digital photographer ‘upgrades’ his/her gear (and loses money each time) the numbers are a lot closer that Overgaard’s example suggests. That said, whatever the cost difference, I still maintain that a film photographer has a different eye to a digital photographer for all the reasons set out above and that – one cannot put a price on.
.
I think that if people are disposed to learn, they’ll learn – whether with film or a digital camera. If they’re not likely to learn anything from the pics they shoot, then they won’t learn using film, just as they won’t with a digital camera.
Film shots cost more than digital (only 36 on a roll for about £5 or $8, plus processing and printing costs) and so film photographers think a bit more before shooting off a frame – agreed. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the resulting pictures are any better! It just means they’ve been thought about more. But think about it too long, and the moment’s gone.
Let’s look at what you gain with a digital camera:
1. Set the ISO for each shot. No longer stuck with ISO 400 or 100 or thereabouts, or whatever you’ve put in the camera.
2. With the generally smaller sensors – than a frame of 35mm film – lenses can be made smaller than for 35mm ..and huge (..I know, I know: DJDLV and others don’t like zoom lenses..) ..huge zoom ranges can be accommodated in a single small lens. The advantages of that are (a) no need to carry an assortment of different lenses, (b) no time wasted while you change lenses ..see it and shoot it!
(2a. Yes, I know: “Don’t use a zoom; take two paces forward instead”. And if you’re at the edge of a lake? ..at the edge of a canyon? ..standing on a balcony? ..riding on a bus? ..sitting on a boat? ..then what..? Don’t take the picture you really want to shoot?)
3. I believe that people DO learn from easily shooting two dozen digital shots and looking at them afterwards (and deleting bad ones) ..”chimping” as it’s derogatorily called. Why did professionals use Polaroid proofs? To check beforehand what they’d get when they took the actual shot. If the framing’s wrong in the first shot, you can see straight away – we-e-ll, after about 3-6 seconds with the slow-as-an-ox replay of a Leica M9 – and shoot another. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with shooting another. With film, of course, it’d cost a few cents or pence, and you’d be closer to your 36-shot limit before rewinding; with digital, you just lose a little battery charge.
4. I doubt that hyperactive madcap-Mozart would have stuck with a quill and ink if a faster means to write a music score were available in his day: I think he’d have hammered out his manuscripts with ‘Sibelius’ (the software, not the man) in a fraction of the time. I think Mahler would have done it on his iPad.
5. It’s possible to wait and reflect before hitting the email ‘Send’ button, just as I’ve waited and revised and thought a bit before hitting ‘Submit Comment’ here. But it doesn’t have to be the long walk to the post box which offers a chance to reflect and think again.
6. D’you travel with a horse and cart, or d’you take a car, taxi, train, plane? Surely not everything you do is stuck in a time warp, is it? You’re obviously using a computer. You obviously use electricity. I doubt that you coat your own glass plates instead of using pre-coated film.
7. Progress, new ways of doing things, have given us ready-coated film instead of brittle glass-plate negatives (..thank you, George Eastman). Progress has given us, and continues to improve, CCD and CMOS sensors (..thank you, Smith and Boyle). You say “..my usual rule of thumb is if something allows you to achieve something faster and with less thinking, it usually leads to a bad result.” Travelling by train, instead of walking, you mean? Buying ready-made clothes – or cameras – without having to tediously make your own?
Stephen, I think you’re sticking in the mud because you’re unwilling to give digital – and those who shoot with digital cameras – a fair assessment. If you really think that slow and awkward’s better, perhaps you’re still shooting Daguerreotypes!
I agree completely with you here.
Oh and on the subject of zooms lol I found my old Nikon 18-200mm zoom lying in a box and sold it for a 28mm 2.8 and 85mm 1.8 to go along with my other primes. Wow, the differnece in quality is out of this world!!! I just might have to start using DSLR again!
.
W-w-w-what? D’you mean that you might – I’ll say it quietly, in brackets, so that your X1 doesn’t hear it (..does that mean that you might actually put your beloved X1 in a cupboard, and shoot, instead, with a camera which lets you change lenses to suit what you want to shoot?..)
“Doctor, doctor! ..We have a breakthrough..!”
Operation succesful, but the patient…
Interesting work, but IMHO I think shooting film exclusively has become the answer to a question no one asked.
35mm was developed to make small cameras take cheap and disposable photos for the masses, quality was never it’s selling or strong point. A modern nikon or canon dslr are way better quality now than 35mm ever where especially light sensitivity.
I could understand exclusively shooting with medium or large format film as it would cost £20k+ to get a digital camera that quality, but if HCB wad alive now he’d be shooting digital. Large format Photographs back then looked down on 35mm like 35mn photographers look down on digital now.
Heiner, copy paste the url is what I do. So post to Flickr or something before uploading here.
Attaching a photo did not work!
Can some one teach me how to do it, step by step?
BR
Heiner
Hi Jali,
don’t be afraid of batteries.
I can shoot more than 1000 photos with one battery (I use only Viewfinder, not LCD), for that I need a 8 GB card, let’s say that you need ap 30 rolls of film for this.
Who do you think is running out first in the dschungel, my battery or your bag of films?
I attach a night photo shot with a Nikon 5100 similar to one of yours. I don’t regard this photo as great, will not make the cut for my upcomming web page, but you see how much more you can “see” of the people (daughter and wife crossing the street) and the background. No flash, a bit light from cars and some shops are enough.
BTW, I like Scotty’s calculation. Who could afford so much money for a hobby, 34 k $! A friend of mine is an under water photographer and he just told me that he needs 100 shots to get one GREAT photo as neither the fish nor he himself can be still under water.
According to Scotty one GREAT photo would cost him then 40 $!
Costs is only one advantage of Digital.
Others:
– can easily correct some things in PP
– you can look at your shot instantly, not tomorrow, so you can adjust for the next one
– you can send to your friends immediately (no waiting plus scanning)
– moving subjects and bad light is no problem nowadays.
Comming back to the hifi comparison: vintage recdord players need a tuning with nowadays knowledge. A Jap. guy called Ken Shindo uses a Garrad 301 (40 years old ) and completely rebuilds the machine. It sells then for 20 000 $. Have not listened to this but read a lot from people who have similar priced gear. The Shindo is probably “out of this world” in quality (btw you can spend more than100 K $ for a record player, so a M 9 is damm cheap, our hobby is damm cheap!)
What I want to say is that it’s no use to copy the great masters of the past who took their limited technology to master class. THEY already did it -HCB or Ansel Adams. The morning sceenery in front of a cafe in Paris, shot in grainy B&W exists a million times on the net.
Blurred photos are not neccesary any more, “bukhe” for the sake of it is limiting creativity (I don’t like bukhe! as you see).
Saw Steve Jobs on TV yesterday in front of graduates saying “don’t live other people’s life”, be yourself and creative!!
We have unlimted possibbilities. On the net I can find any photo ever shot on this planet in human history. No other generation had this before us. I can learn from this.
New soft ware comes out nearly daily. For “collages” or “photomontage” I don’t need scissors any more, the computer can do this much better (this is the path I will go after learning the basics in photography).
Picasso started paining in the style of the old masters, reached his peak in this style as a teenager and then went on to become the most famous and creative painter of his time (maybe until today).
He said it took him only a few years to paint like an adult but the rest of his life to paint like a child.
“Retro” is good for learning but does not work as a destination.
Best regards
Heiner
Thanks for your extensive writing on the magnificent digital technology. I’m not an anti-digital person, just find that the digital technology hasn’t been convincing myself to convert to use digital cameras.
I’m not even trying to copy the great masters, just curious, how could the masters in the past produced magnificent photographs with meterless, mechanical cameras? No auto mode, no autofocus lenses, no lightmeter. I mean, with all the technology we have now, it seems impossible. Yes they did it, but can you do it? And I feel really challenged with those facts. I never even tried to look and use the sunny 16 technique when I was learning photography in college, I underestimated it. Until now. It works in a way I never imagined.
The old way does work for me, I will shoot film with my mechanical cameras until the last film is produced on earth. Until it’s vanished.
For me, converting to digital is not necessary when I still consider photography as a serious hobby, just a hobby. It’s different when I’m a professional photographer, I will definitely use a full-frame DSLR.
Analog photography is expensive, but there are many experiences when I can say money doesn’t matter. It’s a sensation when I can finally free from a lightmeter, it’s a sensation when I hold a cool heavy metal and stylish camera in my palms, it’s a sensation of developing my own black and white films, it’s a sensation when I mix different chemical compounds for a developing agent, it’s a sensation when I shake the developer tank, it’s a sensation when I calculate the time for developing and fixing, it’s a sensatioan when I hang my films dry in the room and watch it frame by frame, it’s a sensation of putting my films into negative sleeves, it’s a sensation when I can finally learn a very basic photography technique that almost forgotten by (almost) every photography enthusiasts, and just like my friend, Tommy, said on his t-shirt: it’s a film thing you wouldn’t understand.
Cheers Heiner, nice discussion!
+1
Good inspiration. (My low light photos always look like I was trying for something else.) These pictures look like you meant them to be that way. Having said that, though, I can’t help thinking how much better these would look on a good digital camera…
wow wonderful bro jali…
jurus 16matahari nya emang mantab pisan 😀
Thanks all for your comments.
@Michiel: It’s blurry isn’t it? well “sharpness is a bourgeouis concept” -HCB :p
@Heiner: I like your direct comment on my photos. But still I won’t convert to DSLR maybe for the next 5-10 years, if only…I could overcome my fearness in cameras that depend on batteries :)) BTW, I still use my old ixus 400 for daily documentation…
@onigo: Forgive me for my lack of skill in photography but I just like the oldskool back-to-basic photography, and yes…I developed my black and white films using home-made chemicals like parodinal. You’re welcome 😀
@Patrick Zee: I like your words: The fundamentals of Photography. Just as a reminder in this modern world :p
@Rob: My guidance is the exposure mat, you can google and download it, but it took hundreds of frames just to find the right formula between shutter speed and aperture to apply in a low light situation.
@Jali: I know it is and I’m as bourgeois as the next man, but I was wondering if this was where you wánted to have your focus.
Yup, the first photo wasn’t unexpected. I know exactly when the boy is chased by the nanny, the image will look blurred.
I actually meant #2, where the focus appears to be on the “horizon”.
I’m just starting to learning about photography and am also using a film SLR and this post HAS inspired me to look up what the “sunny 16” rule is. What I want to know is how do you apply it to dark low light situations?
.
“..how do you apply it to dark low light situations?..” ..by Guesstimate. “How much darker is it here than there?” ..’feel’, if you can, with your eyeballs how much more effort it takes to see details, or how much more your pupil has to open in gloomy conditions. Carry a light-meter with you for a week, and compare what you THINK should be the right exposure with what the meter shows.
You’ll then get a feel for what’s the right exposure in any conditions. Practice makes perfect.. Just takes a little getting used to..
Sound advice David. I know how lazy and “light unsensitive” the 3d colourmatrixmetering (or whatever it’s called) + aperture priority of my D700 makes me every time I pick my FM2 again…
THE BAD: Don’t think this should be considered “inspiration”. Shots are lacklustered — even a disposable Kodak can make “better” pictures than that.
Looks like he is just bragging to the world that he doesn’t use digital. That he is somehow “better” than us mere humans because we depend on batteries and that he knows the “sunny 16” rule while we don’t.
THE GOOD: I applaud your unwillingness to go digital. And I would envy you if you develop your own film — I take this back if you send it to a shop.
THE (somewhat) UNRELATED: Come on now. Let us enjoy the fruits of the industrial revolution. This is what Steve Jobs (RIP) wanted. Shoot with your iPhone, edit on the fly, post it while driving, click like crazy and get 10,000 actuations in less than a month.
LoL!
Just read on Overgaard’s website (A Leica shooter), his latest page on his review of the M9…he an interesting stat near the end of the article where he talks about the number of photos he has taken in the past two years…he says…
“84.175 pictures with the Leica M9. In traditional Leica M lingo, this would mean 2,338 rolls of film, somewhat in the area of 16,350$ in purchase (if slide film) and 18,000$ in development. Not bad performed by a 7,000$ camera”.
Cost alone might be a consideration for you to move to digital….besides, the batteries these days (with exception of the M9, sadly) are damn good…they seem to last forever…
Having said this, I loved my old Nikon F2…a great camera!
Sorry,
but you should go digital.
A modern DSLR can get you good photos without flash in the dark. I bought a Nikon 5100 2 months ago (my first DSRL after 2 bridge cameras and a Pentax SLR 20 years ago) and for me there is no way back.
Technically I cannot find anything that is “correct” in these photos. My bridge cameras also cannot get shots correct in the dark and /or with moving subjects. These kind of photos I normally delete in camera already, they would never make it to the PC.
I don’t neglect “old” technology”, for ex I have 4 analog record players and one CD player. Analog outperforms digital by far on all levels. A friend of mine has one of the most expensive CD players, list price ap. 45 000 $. He admitts, that his 5000 $ record player is better.
Foto and hifi have very similarities: money does not buy you quality and any technology can be used with stunning results. I listened to many hi-end set ups that are totally crap and you could buy something at 10% of the price and get better results. I can set up a 200 $ recordplayer from ebay and you will get goosebumps.
But for most people digital is a big improvement. A all-in one hifi system bought in an electronic market outperforms my parents set up of 1966 by far. These photos here remind me of the photos I shot 35 years ago as teenager when I did not know what I was doing.
I had a look at your flickr, a lot of good photos, much better than the ones you posted here. People and scenery is very familiar to me, I gues you live in Malaysia, I have been living in Thailand for more than 16 years.
Film can be great, look at Steve McCurry’s shots with the last Kodachrome film roll.
Hope you don’t mind me beeing that direct.
Best regards
Heiner
hi heiner.
jali live at Indonesia. And yes, it is near Malaysia. If you already went to Bali, then you were in Indonesia.
I actually like the lighting and atmosphere of the first photo the most. Not sure if I appreciate the composition of the second and third photos though…
Anyway, these are really nice efforts, and good reminder that we shouldn’t always rely on advanced technology, and forget about the fundamentals of photography…
real
Nice work! I have an F2AS.
How do you know what focus point he wanted? Most of all I don’t think any of these photos from this type of process emphasize sharpness.
I like your method. Its experimental meaning that you really have limited expectations for the results, but a good result is so rewarding, fun, and unique. Focus/sharpness is one element but not necessarily the goal of the process.
Of course I can’t be sure. Just seemed that way. I love the atmosphere of teh pics too and really his adventurous approach.
2.8/24 Ai-S with Delta 3200 @ f2.8. It’s sharp within the limits of that lens. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1504663409437&set=o.52342058336&type=1&theater
Well, maybe it was f4.0…
Like that picture Michiel. Just shows that with the right eye, whether it is digital or film the picture can be great.
I like the stuff you work with (F2 with no light meter) and admire your approach. Keep it simple.
Still, the first two don’t have their focus point where you wanted it I guess, but the third one is really good. Its composition works well in colour.
Why not make life a little easier and use a faster film in low light like that?