Film versus Digital

I started this forum for any collecting hobby and it turned into my camera collecting and using forum. I use it mostly to keep a record of my photo adventures. Nobody but me seems to have photo adventures that visit here....but however. I have so many cameras now that I forget which is which and which ones work and which ones don't. If you have cameras and adventures you would be welcome to post here.

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Niner
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Film versus Digital

Post by Niner » Wed Feb 23, 2022 3:43 pm

Here is one man's opinion. He has his finger on the film version of the scale obviously.....however some good points are made as to why film is still fascinating to some of us.

https://thedarkroom.com/film-vs-digital ... FosBbcNzIQ
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Re: Film versus Digital

Post by DuncaninFrance » Thu Feb 24, 2022 4:10 am

That is a biased view I would say.

The cost factor is completely wrong . Since I bought my FUJI E-X3 I have spent very little on ancillaries and I would have spent the same on a film camera.
The big difference is the SD card.
I can transfer images by WiFi direct to my computer, remove the card from the camera and connect it to various pieces of kit to save the images anywhere I wish. I don't need files to store negatives and I don't need to buy film, store it correctly and use it by it's best by date.
I can view the image I have just taken and delete / re position it at will. I can, as I did last night for a friend take some photographs of a rash he has developed after starting a trial treatment for cancer, processed the images and sent them to a doctor in Bordeaux for analysis - the whole process taking about 15 minutes.

Yes I have a collection of film cameras but I wouldn't go back to film for anything.

Oh, and how many film cameras will take videos :roll: :roll: :roll:
Duncan

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Re: Film versus Digital

Post by Niner » Thu Feb 24, 2022 12:15 pm

I love my digital cameras for taking vacation trips. Easy to use and take all the images I like all stored on a SD card and maybe later transferred to thumb drives and CD discs. Great, clear, sharp, pictures suitable for equally great prints...which are hardly ever made since I can view them on the computer screen. Digital is better in the sense that a new Toyota Corolla with automatic transmission... plus other modern technological advances of the surprise and delight nature is better than a 66 Shelby Mustang with 4 speed Borg Warner standard transmission. However, which would be more fun to drive? Wouldn't you rather get behind the wheel of a Shelby Cobra and experience driving it over any Toyota? How many people now days would be comfortable with a standard transmission though? Most people wouldn't be able to drive it without striping a few gears. My 40 year old children have never driven a car with a standard transmission. Few young people of 20 or less years have any idea about how film is used in a camera..particularly the SLR's with the apertures and shutter speeds to manipulate and the lens to focus manually nor understand why one would want to chose one balance of choices over another.

When you take pictures with a film camera each shot counts because each shot costs in time as well as money to get to the final result. The photo snapped doesn't exist until the roll is finished and the film developed and the image scanned and recorded or printed. However, when the image exists after being developed on film, it is tangibly recorded, complete with whatever human failings of focus or exposure, to be scanned or printed for as long as the negative exists. It isn't a mysterious computer directed and controlled recorded impulse in on a SD card that may or may not be lost to memory or sight at any date in the future by even an accidental delete key stroke. Of course various cloud type possibilities exist in theory but yet to be proven by time. Properly stored film negatives can last more than a life time and be passed down to succeeding generations.

Shooting with an old camera,decades old that used to be in demand, and often expensive back in the days of its youth, is an experience beyond the results in the captured images. It's akin to why you would take an old Enfield or Mauser out to a range and shoot it. You will end up with holes punched in paper but holes in paper isn't the point of why you went to the range. Same way with film cameras. The shot results aren't as important as the whole process of the shooting.And if you get some images that you like ...and maybe somebody else likes as well.... then that's more memorable than shooting holes in a piece of paper.
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