Film The Preserve Of The Well Off

CaptainPenguin

CaptainPenguin

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Nigel Cliff
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In was reading a blog post on Flickr stating that "Film Is Not dead" and it got me thinking,one of the great advantages of digital is that once the initial cost of the camera is taken out of the equation all that a shot costs you is the electricity to recharge the batteries whereas film has associated developing and printing costs.
Last weekend I took about 300 shots at the SVR Autumn Gala and had that been on my old favourite Provia slide film the cost would have been about £60,working on the principle that I take about 20 times that number of shots at Steam Railways each year let alone my other shots that is quite an outlay and more than covers the price of my faithful 350D.
So is film going to be more and more the prerogative of those who dont have to count the pennies every time they press the shutter?
Dont get me wrong if money were no object I would have a Nikon FA again that I loved back in the 80's and shove loads of Provia through it.
 
some people still ike to process and print their own film. I quite enjoying shooting B&W since digital is too clean to produce nice B&W compared to film. also you can't get the velvia look either with digital lol


but it does cost so I don't do it very often.
 
Film isn't the preserve of the wealthy it's the preserve of the prudent. People, myself incuded are less careful about the shots they take with digital because of the lack of percieved cost. just because it costs nothing to process your photos on your computer doesn't mean you shouldn't account for you time and I bet you "spend" more in manhours sat a PC than you ever did with film.


Film - it's about quality not quantity.

I'm trademarking that one so hands off ;)
 
Bulk loading cuts the price dramatically, but even if you can't be bothered to do that film is about the cheapest it has ever been in real terms.

Black and white and E6 are easy enough and inexpensive enough to process once you have the kit to do it which is also cheap enough nowadays if you look in the right places.

C41 is dirt cheap to process.

Film is not the preserve of the well off it is the preserve of the dinosaur and the anally-retentive obsessive.
 
There seems to be far greater expense in updating hardware and software with digital than film. The technology involved with film was pretty stable, unlike digital, unless you wanted to change format.

The camera manufacturers must be so grateful for digital....:clap:
 
Nicos Rex said:
Bulk loading cuts the price dramatically, but even if you can't be bothered to do that film is about the cheapest it has ever been in real terms.

Black and white and E6 are easy enough and inexpensive enough to process once you have the kit to do it which is also cheap enough nowadays if you look in the right places.

C41 is dirt cheap to process.

Film is not the preserve of the well off it is the preserve of the dinosaur and the anally-retentive obsessive.
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Just to prove that the 100% digital can be as anally retentive as the next man I fit M42 manual focus lenses to my 350D regularly and go out just so that I know I can still meter and focus the old way.
 
Kev M said:
Film isn't the preserve of the wealthy it's the preserve of the prudent. People, myself incuded are less careful about the shots they take with digital because of the lack of percieved cost. just because it costs nothing to process your photos on your computer doesn't mean you shouldn't account for you time and I bet you "spend" more in manhours sat a PC than you ever did with film.


Film - it's about quality not quantity.

I'm trademarking that one so hands off ;)
Click to expand...

Thats a bit unfair Kev in intimating that users of digital don't take as much time and care over each shot as film users,what I find is that it allows me to experiment more with composition and exposure as I don't have to worry about the cost,and yes I do spend a lot of time in front of the PC but no than I would have spent in the darkroom and in more comfortable surroundings,and I dont get "She who must be obeyed" complaining about the smell of the chemicals
 
Hmmm... To get a full frame body would cost me £1700 or so. The cost of a film + D&P is around a tenner (to make the maths easier!) so that's 170 rolls of film which could take a while!

I thought this "Film is not the preserve of the well off it is the preserve of the dinosaur and the anally-retentive obsessive." was a bit OTT until I saw the signature

(Nikon F3, F4s, D40, 'Blad 500 c/m, Bronica SQA)

and realised that there was more than a little self abuse in the comment!!!
Nicos Rex or Velviasaurus?
 
CaptainPenguin said:
.
Last weekend I took about 300 shots at the SVR Autumn Gala and had that been on my old favourite Provia slide film the cost would have been about £60,
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But how many of those shots were actually usable and how many went straight in the bin? Film makes you give a lot more thought to pressing that shutter button - no bad thing?
 
CT said:
But how many of those shots were actually usable and how many went straight in the bin? Film makes you give a lot more thought to pressing that shutter button - no bad thing?
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No more than used to go in bin in the old film days,on a slightly different tack I now do Football photography that I would never have dared to do in film days,admittedly 70% of the shots are binned but both I and the team are well chuffed with.

By the way is this a West Midlands argument or can anyone join in.

Bet you're a Brummie
 
CaptainPenguin said:
By the way is this a West Midlands argument or can anyone join in.
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Open to all comers. ;)

Bet you're a Brummie
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You lose then, Walsall actually, although I was born, bred and as far as I know, conceived ...in Hednesford, Staffs.
 
CT said:
But how many of those shots were actually usable and how many went straight in the bin? Film makes you give a lot more thought to pressing that shutter button - no bad thing?
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Aahhh, the voice of reason...it is not heard often nowadays;)
 
CT said:
Open to all comers. ;)



You lose then, Walsall actually, although I was born, bred and as far as I know, conceived ...in Hednesford, Staffs.
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I take it all back a fellow Black Countryman I bend my digital knee in supplication,and I have to admit I was born in Birmingham but that was my mothers fault,conceived in Dudley though.
 
LOL. I'm the biggest digital whore on the block, I was buying the first digital cameras when neither the cameras or the printers were hacking it, and I've been using digital editing since the earliest days of home PC's. I was in love with the whole concept, but it was a long time before digital cameras could be considered pro tools. For me that camera was probably the 10D, but I waited for the 20D, at which time I sold all my film gear and have pretty well regretted it ever since, and that's no knock against digital, I love the convenience of it and the flexilbility which digital editing gives us.

I get a bit puzzled when I read that people have filled 3 or 4 cards on a days shooting, I must admit. I can understand if you're shooting sport and trying to catch the high spot of the action, but for most stuff whether I'm shooting digital or film, I pretty well know if the shot is in the bag when I press the button. I suppose it comes from shooting a lot of weddings on film.
 
CT said:
I get a bit puzzled when I read that people have filled 3 or 4 cards on a days shooting, I must admit. I can understand if you're shooting sport and trying to catch the high spot of the action, but for most stuff whether I'm shooting digital or film, I pretty well know if the shot is in the bag when I press the button. I suppose it comes from shooting a lot of weddings on film.
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I used to be puzzled by that as well but having just completed a series of major equine shows I realise that this (and many other types of events) could not be covered in the days of film. If I have 65-70 competitors and they all want shots of the horse standing, head shots, walk, trot, canter, gallop and possibly jumping, then throw in the mix of foal with mare, foals on their own etc etc I need to be able to offer a minmum of 25-30 shots per competitor which equates to over 2,000 shots. Because of memory restrictions I do have to be careful what I shoot as I could end up with an unmanageable amount of images, as it is I expect to bin around 15%, 20% at the most but maybe this is because I know my subject and shoot accordingly.

With regards to weddings I have cut down the amount of shots I take as I concentrate on getting the shots I really want. However, like many forms of photography, the digital revolution has changed the face of wedding photography as photographers can now afford to tell the story of the day. When I got married 12 years ago our photographer was there for about an hour and a half, took a relatively small amount of images (compared to today) and we got an album with 30 images with the tissue paper in between - welcome to Snoozesville! This cost us £700 which was about the going rate at the time and the images and album are nothing great except for some fun shots that we specifically asked for. The album is in the loft and has not seen the light of day for some time now. :D

Compare that to the digital art books (or whatever you want to call them thesee days) and all of my clients go for the contemporary version which can hold many more images and document the emotion of the day much better than the 'old' way.

Just my tuppence worth!
 
Today 11:08
Hacker Quote:
Originally Posted by CT

I get a bit puzzled when I read that people have filled 3 or 4 cards on a days shooting, I must admit. I can understand if you're shooting sport and trying to catch the high spot of the action, but for most stuff whether I'm shooting digital or film, I pretty well know if the shot is in the bag when I press the button. I suppose it comes from shooting a lot of weddings on film.


I used to be puzzled by that as well but having just completed a series of major equine shows I realise that this (and many other types of events) could not be covered in the days of film. If I have 65-70 competitors and they all want shots of the horse standing, head shots, walk, trot, canter, gallop and possibly jumping, then throw in the mix of foal with mare, foals on their own etc etc I need to be able to offer a minmum of 25-30 shots per competitor which equates to over 2,000 shots. Because of memory restrictions I do have to be careful what I shoot as I could end up with an unmanageable amount of images, as it is I expect to bin around 15%, 20% at the most but maybe this is because I know my subject and shoot accordingly.
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Personally I feel that comes by experience, knowing when to shoot and what the end result will be. I remember one of my college lectures saying he would only take around 100 photos at a wedding normally :eek: I was thinking what? How can you capture everything! But he knows when and where to take the shots. When I did my first wedding earlier in the year I was like a blue arse fly trying to capture everything! (Which rememind's me I have another wedding in around 2 weeks :thinking: :help:

I reckon film still has a huge pro use, I still can't get over my work with some 5x4 trannys last year it was mind blowing! Not my shots, but the result that the film gave me, colours and sharpness it was awesome!!! I really can't see digital coming close to that for quite a while yet.
 
cost wise - starting from scratch - film is dirty cheap in comparison.
cheap dslr plus a lens or two; £700-1000
cost of computer capable of handling photos; £500-1000
software for photos; £200-500
printing; ~£0.50 for a 9x6

film camera; £100 (ebay!!)
processing; £3-4 for E6 or bit more for negs and 6x4 (9x6) prints

buuuuut...weight in the fact you can take thousands of shots on digital 'for free' then you're going to outweigh the cost of it all soon enough. now, since many households have a computer, for internet and so on, thats maybe one part of the process out of the way too...

these things aside you can't been the grain structure of a nice roll of b&w or the deep richness of Velvia 50...and not the new stuff. trannys are amazing, no other way to describe it really. their high saturated colours and depth are just staggering. I struggle to reach that sort of result with digital tbh. got about 18 rolls sat in the freezer of the old style V 50. I think I might thaw some out and give it a spin now...autumn colours and all that :)
 
Nod said:
<snip>

I thought this "Film is not the preserve of the well off it is the preserve of the dinosaur and the anally-retentive obsessive." was a bit OTT until I saw the signature

(Nikon F3, F4s, D40, 'Blad 500 c/m, Bronica SQA)

and realised that there was more than a little self abuse in the comment!!!
Nicos Rex or Velviasaurus?
Click to expand...

Whilst I will gladly admit that my tongue was planted fairly firmly in my cheek I hope that there was no intended double entendre in the use of the term self abuse!
 
Hacker said:
I used to be puzzled by that as well but having just completed a series of major equine shows I realise that this (and many other types of events) could not be covered in the days of film. If I have 65-70 competitors and they all want shots of the horse standing, head shots, walk, trot, canter, gallop and possibly jumping, then throw in the mix of foal with mare, foals on their own etc etc I need to be able to offer a minmum of 25-30 shots per competitor which equates to over 2,000 shots.
Just my tuppence worth!
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They shot the same events with film, everything was shot with film cos that's all there was.
Maybe the competitors where not as demanding when film was the only option, they wouldn't have wanted 25-30 shots for a start.....you must be too cheap..:lol:
Does every competitor really buy 25-30 shots each from an event, or do you shoot in anticipation ?
You might have made a rod for you're own back, shooting film, they'd get what was available and were probably happy to get that.
2000 shots is already un-manageable, definitely not doable on film, but they'd spread the shoot across a few togs
 
Not really. My film cost about £1.20 a roll for 12 shots but then I don't go through a huge amount. I shoot an occasional roll with a medium format camera and I develop and scan them myself. The overheads are minimal and I have so much fun doing it I really should be paying myself for the entertainment! :)

And the camera is about 20 years old so no upgrade path required on an initial investment of under £500 for the camera, two backs a metered prism and three lenses.

I didn't get a 1/4 of my digital SLR for that and it will be obsolete a long time before the film one!
 
joxby said:
They shot the same events with film, everything was shot with film cos that's all there was.
Maybe the competitors where not as demanding when film was the only option, they wouldn't have wanted 25-30 shots for a start.....you must be too cheap..:lol:
Does every competitor really buy 25-30 shots each from an event, or do you shoot in anticipation ?
You might have made a rod for you're own back, shooting film, they'd get what was available and were probably happy to get that.
2000 shots is already un-manageable, definitely not doable on film, but they'd spread the shoot across a few togs
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Obviously they don't all buy them but I want to offer them the choice of a good range of images. As for them being unmanageable, far from it, it takes me about 5-6 hours to sort into individual competitors, edit, resize and upload so it's not too bad.

And cheap I'm not! ;)
 
Nicos Rex said:
Whilst I will gladly admit that my tongue was planted fairly firmly in my cheek I hope that there was no intended double entendre in the use of the term self abuse!
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None at all!
 
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