What do you miss most about film?

For me, it's those little plastic boxes they use to return your mounted slides

in. I had a million uses for those things but never thought to stock a supply

and now I'm running out!

I miss having to wait to see my negatives, having to look at them under a loupe, having to decipher what the negative image is actually showing. I miss fingerprints on the negs and slides, the occasional lab mistake which ruined rolls. I miss all the time spent mixing caustic and smelly chemicals, the time agitating film, the time drying and sleeving and flattening and cataloguing the film, the time spent making contact sheets and marking them and then filing them. I miss the lack of printing control I had when sending out negs to be printed.

 

Oh wait, I don't miss those things at all.

I still shoot film ,I do miss Kodachrome 25, and Panatomic X.

For me, film as a medium has magic, digital does not as much. I miss the artwork on the boxes and the cassettes. And I miss the fact that different emulsions behaved differently. You could be an alchemist!

 

However, the resulting images are virtually the same if you have a good camera. Film is nicer in some ways, but, not suprisingly, digital is nicer in others, so it balances out. I converted to digital and haven't used film since.

I'm still using film also. And I miss Kodachrome 25 too. I also miss Extar 25.

I miss my grandchildren not knowing more about photography than I do.

I don't miss it I still use it. Black & white FP4 & Delta 100 still lure me to the darkroom in both 24 x 36mm format & 6 x 6.

Why limit yourself to one method of photographic expression?

I am even tempted to break out an old 4 x 5 camera & enjoy it's challenges once again.

Call me old fashioned but I still prefer a wet darkroom to hours spent in Photoshop.

The B&W darkroom. Great place to be by yourself.

After nearly going completely digital in 2005, I'm shooting more film now than I have in the past 3 years. In fact, 90% of what I shoot is with film. Regarding DSLRs', my D2x is gone. My 5D is gone. Only my D50 remains. Along with my film cameras that I purchased this year including: FA, F3, F5, Leica M3, Rolleiflex 2.8e, Rolleicord, Hasselblad 500c/m, & Contax RTS III.

Ilford SFX.

Tri X !

what I miss is the surprise I would get when I picked up my photos and went through them and found the special few keepers. With digital, I love being able to take many photos and edit them, but it did spoil the surprise factor.

With film, even the bad shots ended up in a shoe box somewhere for someone later to discover .. with digital the bad shots are usually destroyed .. and the good shots are hidden under some file name in a computer that nobody sees unless I put them on the website .. and then invite them to see.

 

Unless you're printing a lot of your digital work for the family scrapbook chances are other family members may never see really how much fun you are having taking pictures .. and since we all tend to throw out the seemingly bad ones .. we seem to have lost our yardstick for viewing how we develop.

 

with digital I really don't think I've got the satisfaction of seeing my photos pop .. like those slides on the light table .. and for some reason working slower as with film to make every shot a best or at least better effort seems to have a bit more of the magic to the process. I certainly loved getting a tougher shot on film rather than a mediocre shot on digital and enhancing it to make it better.

 

I'm not fully digital and really never want to be as film is sometimes a better medium. As medium format prices have come down I'm eyeing that too. Yeah, I want that big heavy camera that forces me to work and sweat to get a photo. I like it slow, I like it difficult .. never appreciated easy very much

I do not miss film... I still shoot 20 or so rolls a week.

 

But-- the greatest feeling I associate with film, is when I place mounted slides on my light table. Arranging them, sorting them out (My light table is 3 feet wide), is such an engaging experience. My digital workflow programs (Photoshop CS3/Lightroom) deliver nothing of this feeling.

I miss being able to walk into any little (or big) store and purchase Kodachrome 25 and 64.

 

I used to buy Kodak mailers and would drop my film in the mail before leaving for home during long vacations....I miss reliving the trip when I arrived home and found my slides waiting for me!

I miss labeling and sorting 35mm slides and putting 4x5 transparencies on my large light box, staring at them and marvelling at the brilliance of the colors.....and the slide shows were a lot of fun.

Strange question, asked as if film has been discontinued, and what our memories are as if speaking of someone dead. Last time I checked, there isn't much to miss. We still have a large number of emulsions available. Some miss films like Kodachrome 25 and Ecktar 25. But negative color film has never been better. Just try the new Kodak Portras, for example. Try beating the exposure latitude of those films with an APS-sized, or even 35mm-sized, digital sensor. You won't be able to do it, unless perhaps you go for one of the big-boy digital backs for $10K and up.

I'm still using some film, and will be stepping up the usage for the coming summer in Alaska.

 

In looking at some recent slides, digital can't match that 3D look of slides. Maybe it's just me, but green on computer screens doesn't look good so slide film wins there too, in my opinion.

 

The wait issue of film never bothered me much. I've played trumpet all my life and there's been no proven quick way to master that, so I've grown up with some degree of patience.

35mm I don't miss at all the d2x is lightyears in front of my old f5 regardless of what film I was using, medium format is another story but when good backs become affordable which looks sooner rather than later I doubt I'll miss that either.

 

I still have a soft spot for some of my old slides especially through a projector but the d2 images look great on my high def big screen too bring on the d3.

The huge cost.

what do I miss most about film?....the suspense of waiting to see if the pics came out good

 

what do I like most about digital?....seeing the pics very quickly to see if they came out good

I'm still working on my freezer full of Kodachrome 25 and Ektar 25, and thankfully Velvia 50 is back. I miss shooting these as much as I used to but at least I have them until a DSLR comes out that is almost as good.

I still have 50+ rolls of Kodak slide film in my freezer, stored below zero. I finished a roll today. I shoot my D80 but can't let go of my F3HP. I feel like I am creating a permanent document every time I trip the shutter, whereas when I shoot my D80 I feel like I am taking a snapshot just for me. There is nothing of any permanence with digital, it's just bits written on a chip. Until it gets printed, digital is nothing. But when the film is processed, it's there forever (provided it is stored well). I have glass plate negatives of my grandfather when he was a child. I'm sure that when my grandson is my age, he'll have none of my digital photos in his possession. They'll just disappear someday.

 

Dave

I love film. I love to take photographs, I love the texture and I love the grain. I love the little containers but not as much as when they were tin. I have negatives and pictures of my parents, of the war and all the places I have been. My old friend film is a part of me.

To Dave Lee: nonsense! If you look after film well, it will last. But if you look after digital images well, guess what? They will last, too. :-) Let's cut this stupidity and misinformation about digital archiving, please.

 

I like the fact that a piece of film is a historical object. It is not merely an image. A negative taken of Churchill in the '30s was actually there, and as old as the image it carries. This is not so with mere data (a digital image).