I’ve been neglecting my Nikon…
Look at it sitting there all alone.
The main reason why is because of how much money and time it takes to actually get film developed in Japan (especially black & white, which is my favourite). One of the things that I’m really looking forward to when I get back to England is to start developing black & white film myself. I have access to a negative scanner at home which will make life a lot easier. At the moment I have no means of developing the negatives myself, and no way of getting them onto a computer. So I’ve been forking out money on developing and having the negatives scanned onto a CD at the shop. Bear in mind that this process takes the shop about 2 weeks to complete as well. If I developed myself, I’d have the developing finished in under half and hour (at little to no cost), then an hour or so later the negatives would be dry enough to scan…
Also, the dynamic range (sorry to get geeky!) of black & white film is so good compared to the range of the sensor on my entry-level DSLR.
This photo was taken in digital (RAW) and processed with Lightroom 2. I love black & white, and it’s fun to post-process on a computer when shot in digital, but there’s just something so much more appealing about shooting black & white film. Once it’s developed you have the finished product right there in front of you.
Digital is great, but requires so much time and effort in terms of sitting in front of a computer. This is made even worse by the fact that I go out and shoot about 200 photos in one day. I literally have tonnes of photos backed up on my hard drive that I haven’t even looked at yet. Also, when it comes to post-processing a RAW shot, there are an infinite number of directions that one can go in. So many that I often edit a photo to completion only to reset it and start all over again…
Film is so much easier to deal with, you look at it and make this decision:
Good? Keep it
Bad? Bin it
So much easier than examining a memory card full of RAW shots, some of which could be salvaged with a little/lot of time in post-processing.
No.
For me, analogue is definitely a healthier obsession!
4 Comments
This argument has been raging since the dawn of time and both sides are valid. Right now you’re on an analogue fix which is great, I love shooting film too but I guarantee that you’ll get back into digital pretty soon. If someone asks to take some photos of their band, portrait session, etc I doubt you’ll shoot only film just because the instant feedback digital offers. For me, film is just some fun to have over the weekend when I want to stir some creative juices when I’m tired of that immediacy.
Enjoy your TLR!
Yeah, you’re right Danny. I love both. I think the title should have been “A Lazy Man”. I also see the hypocrisy in my singing the praises of film in a blog, yet using a digital image as the subject! I think I go through mad mood swings and change my mind constantly. Last night I was tired and thinking about how much effort it will be to go through my digital library and post-pro all of the decent shots. Then I looked at my analogue stuff and just saw so many shots that were ready to upload as they were.
To be honest, I don’t really get asked to shoot for people, so most of my photography is just for myself. I don’t feel I have good enough equipment to shoot for others…
How is life back in Auz?
I know how you feel about back catalogues, I have 4 years of photos to clean up. I went through ‘07 last night, took me two hours!
Life is good here, settling in well and busy with uni and family life but not so much time for photography.
You post awsome articles, bookmarked for future referrence !