Film Film from Portland OR & Vancouver BC

KillRamsey

Hall of Famer
Location
Hood River, OR
Name
Kyle
Took a trip 3-4 weeks back, and just got the rolls developed. I went in with a friend on a refurbed Epson scanner that does 12,000 dpi, and I'm learning how much work doing your own scans can be. SO hard to get the dust and hair off to the point that the auto correction will get it all. Also some of the crops were off, but I just gave up doing and redoing and redoing them. Here are a couple I liked...

Ektar 100, long exposure, and no post tweaking whatsoever:
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TMax 400, my daughter safe and dry inside a rented cargo bike, looking at an Ipod.
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TMax 400, a friend and her baby.
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TMax 400, the Kennedy School Hotel.
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Don't remember if this was Ektar or Fuji 400H, I think it was Fuji. Vancouver Science Museum.
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Fuji 400H, Vancouver BC, water park for my daughter
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Fuji 400H, Vancouver BC, chinese gardens
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Ektar 100, Seattle green rooftop park
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1. I brought an X100, and shot about 1900 on it as well. It does a great job, but it doesn't offer wider or longer focal lengths. I'm not nuts. I just like shooting film too.

2. I like the look of film for some things - even though a decent digital will be clearer when zoomed in it doesn't usually look "better" to me. Ektar 100 and TMax 400, especially, have a very non-neutral, affected cast to them that I really like. Also I really like the fact that I'm getting that casted, affected look without running a cell phone pic through a social sharing site that tracks marketing info on me. I'm being facetious but you probably know what I mean.

3. You overstate the quality of what I would call "point & shoots" compared to Ektar or TMax. Good film through decent glass has better mid tones and details in the shadows than all of the cheaper digital cameras I've ever had. Decent film is a really good sensor. If I can manage to scan it without pug hair in the way, and I kick it up to full resolution, I get a collossal file size and there's still no visible film grain.

4. It's fun to do some things slowly and manually. It's not for everyone, but it is for some people. If you've never made your own pasta sauce from raw ingredients, then you may have no idea what I'm talking about, and that's cool. But loading film, making decisions, screwing things up, and sometimes getting them right is ALL a much more rewarding process when you did most of the work instead of a chip. And that sense of reward is, after all, pretty much the only reason to go out and do all of this. No?
 
Well... With all respect to the above, I want to notice that getting great result from film is some kind of lottery and even all pleasure from successful frames would be ruin by great number of wasted ones by reason of many technical and human mistakes and you had no chance to correct them because there is no possibility to instantly check the result...
Also post processing in digital field gives much more freedom than film. The equipment much smaller and easier to work with.
But the main thing in this comparison is that you never know what you'll get at the end from film (may be some like that but me) and the worst thing that sometimes you get just nothing because... The light:) Hope you know what I mean:)))
 
I do. But it isn't what I experience at all. I have a very good idea of what I'm going to get most of the time, and I don't have very many "bad exposure" shots anymore, at all. Maybe not 100% ideal in hindsight but usually more or less right on the money for what I intended. Also you can post process scans of film just as much as digital files, and as I mentioned above, the jpgs from a good scanner and good film have much better IQ than small sensor compacts. You can push and pull those files without blowing out highlights much more than you can small sensor digital shot files. And all digital sensors have their own quirks too, you just (hopefully) find one whose quirks suit you, as I've done with the X100.

Shooting Ektar 100 in a late 70's Minolta with Aperture Priority is a wonderful thing. The camera is just the right size and weight, it's dead-reliable, the meter is great, it has EV comp right on top, the glass is GOOD and CHEAP (like $50 for a good 28mm f2.8), and film is about ten bucks a roll to develop. It isn't a crazy guessing game or a crap shoot, but it does have just enough manual effort / mental effort / variability in it to be more exciting than cheap digitals. Plus having to do some thinking, and paying a penalty for doing it wrong has made me learn a LOT more than I would've with just digital. I always bring both the minolta and the X100 - different tools for different jobs. But shooting film is ... fun. For me taking pictures isn't usually just a documentary chore to be accomplished as cheaply and effortlessly as possible. I'll never argue that digital isn't easier, or ultimately cheaper. Point 100% conceded. But those are just minor side factors in the decision process I make everytime I decide to grab a camera on my way out the door or not. Mostly it just seems like it will be fun, or it doesn't. Film is fun.
 
Sometimes, it's just fun to shoot film. I go through phases, and once in a blue moon, I do pull out a film camera. But each time I shoot film (with a MF camera), I don't trust myself to feel confident that I actually exposed and focused the shot correctly. So there's a lot of anxiety AND excitement about waiting for the film to come back from the developer.
 
I kinda like the anxiety (developing wait time). There's a so-so lab VERY close to home on my bike route, and then there's a whoop-ass good lab downtown where I don't need to go, about 45min bike ride each way. The good lab downtown does 24hr turnaround time and are wonderful, and the same price. It's a tough choice each time but lately it's been all good lab.
 
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