Only you can answer that. I dabbled with it a couple of years ago but found my skills manually focussing an old lens meant I spent a lot of money to get lots of blurry, out of focus shots that I would have been better taking with a digital camera. That said I do miss it and would like another go. It’s expensive and slow but that’s the charm. You have to wait days or been weeks to see your images. You can get a couple of rolls of film shot and developed for not a huge amount of cash so why not give it a go and see if you enjoy it?
Sell it. Rather than letting it sit unused sell it on here or eBay and let someone who wants to shoot film make use of it.
The cheapest way to try out some black and white film might be to buy a roll of Ilford XP2, which can be processed in the C41 chemistry that's used for colour films and costs about £6. Then you can send it to filmdev.co.uk, who will develop and scan it for £4 at a resolution that's good enough for web use (add £2 for a medium sized scan that's fine for most purposes, or £4 for a large scan that's good enough for anything). That's £10-14 all in, plus postage. Don't be discouraged by the more negative responses. One reason to try it is for the variety - the results look significantly different to purely digital shots. The shots have a texture you don't get with a sensor. That old Pentax may be fine, though for £20 on ebay you could pick up an EOS film body that would work and autofocus with your modern lenses.
Oddly enough, after spending years in darkrooms and printing many thousands of images I feel exactly the opposite. There was only so much pleasure I could take from watching images "come up in the developer"...
In 35mm it is, I only use 120 and larger now. The vast majority of 35mm photos I’ve taken come out with the same resolution as my iPhone, or worse. Not that it means you shouldn’t use itReally, I bet this statement gets a few photogs spluttering over their coffee this morning.
In my opinion I don't think film cameras are worth it.
...wherein lies the rub. Many of the pictures I take require cropping to make them work, often quite harsh cropping (all innuendo will be ignored
).
Forgot about the whole scanning nause.
I can’t believe that a 35mm negative will give the same results as a 24mp camera. I’ve had 35mm scanned from a flatbed, a good lab scan and a scan with my macro lens and a6000 and none of them compare to my a6000 at 100%. Obviously at a certain size print you won’t be able to tell the difference but I’ve printed 35mm in a darkroom at 8x10 and it was still worse than my digital camera. I’m not saying you shouldn’t enjoy 35mm and the prints you get but for me the results aren’t worth the effort vs digital.
I agree but it’s what you want from photography that will decide whether it’s worth it or not. For me it’s not worth it in 35mm. But I like using film cameras and 6x6 and above give me a good enough image that it’s worth using. But if I could pick just one it would be digital, I can do everything with my Sony. For me it’s a bit like having a sports car that you take out at weekends, it’s probably not worth it financially or logically but it’s more fun than driving the family car
I agree, that’s why I gave up on 35mm. I loved using 35mm cameras but in the long run it’s worth the effort vs the Sony. I miss using slide film, holding the positives is cool.
In my experience the print size that it’s not noticeable is too small. Maybe I’ve had really bad scans but the scans I get with my macro lens are really good. We don’t have have many smaller prints at home, I haven’t measured them but eyeballing them they look bigger than 10inches along the short edge so for me digital is better.
And in my experience, A3 (16x11) is my standard large print. And 35mm film easily gives excellent results for this size.
24Mp digital gives you about 375ppi at that size. My 35mm scans give me roughly 200ppi (13Mp) on a Plustek 8100.
The issue we're having is likely to be nose-up-close examination (as you mention 100%). If you assume a normal viewing distance of an A3 print to be 30 inches(?) the human eye (assuming 20/20 vision) cannot resolve better than 115ppi. It's only when you get to 12" distance that the eye may be able to resolve the difference. Certainly my eyes can't as I don't have 20/20 vision (and I've tried it!). The only step closer than that is zoomed in on a computer screen at greater magnification than the eye can see at.
And discussing the usefulness of looking at images at 100% is a whole 'nother conversation
if 35mm gave the same results as digital, none of us would use it. There is more to any picture than resolution. Comparing film to digital on the basis of resolution alone is like comparing a fry-up to a plate of gelatine leaves with some wallpaper paste on the side and a glass of vegetable oil to wash it down with. The second option contains all the same nutrients as the fry-up does but it is not even slightly delicious. I don't want just nutrients in my food - I want deliciousness as well. The way that a film produces an image as a three dimensional matrix of grains looks a whole lot more appetising than a flat digital image does.
I didn’t say there wasn’t more to it than resolution. I was replying to a comment about image resolution...
