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Who is enjoying shooting 35mm film?


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I do. I rediscovered my 35mm camera when the grandchildren starting to arrive and haven't looked back. When I

purchased the camera in 1976, we couldn't afford any of the accessories other than a flash; but now--diposable

income and eBay!!! I shoot almost exclusively b&w and teach it at our local art gallery. We have a wonderful, fully

equipped, modern darkroom with 11 stations and two 8 foot sinks. I enjoy every aspect from composing the picture

to hanging the final print (I have a framer and a dry press). There are so many aspects of b&w that I have yet to

explore including medium format (I was given an old Voitlander Bessa 66 c1938, but I plan to purchase something

newer--a Hasselblad perhaps). I will be retiring next summer and plan on spending a great deal of time in the field

(including travelling) and in the dark room perfecting some of these dimensions; and I hope to pass this skill onto

others through the art gallery.

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Hello Bob. Maybe you really should try that old Voigtländer. I don't know that modell, but I think that you probably will get amazed with the results. I defenitively more and more think, that new or newer is not always better. A Hasselblad is for sure a good choice, but keep an eye on a good Rolleiflex TLR, if that kind of camera coul have some appeal for you. If you can live only with a lens, is a very fine instrument capable of extremelly good results (in my opinion, maybe even better than Hassi, if also equiped with a Planar (Maybe because of the absence of mirror vibration?). Also (relatively) light and very silent. With all this digital fobia, there is a lot of good, or even extremelly good, analogic used equipment out there, for a really interesting price. Come on people, wake up! Use it! As far as I am concerned, I will not think of trading my 53 year old Leica M3 for anything else just for the sake of beeing digital, new, modern, or whatever. She is still so young and pretty...After all, if you do analogic and digital, you can enjoy the best of both. You don't need to exclude a part of the fun. Rui<div>00Rac9-91601584.jpg.71b2c2a264e9b6b6470da8c5ab04c40a.jpg</div>
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I very much enjoy shooting 35mm slide film with my Olympus OM4Ti and fixed focal length primes. I prefer the simplicity of this aproach to photography. Digital is fine, I own a 10Mp Nikon DSLR which I use regularly, but I find I do not enjoy shooting with digital cameras much (Though I am often pleased with the printed results from digital cameras in moderate sized prints).

There is a lot of hype about digitals dynamic range advantage, but to be honest I rarely have problems with slide films narrow latitude, I just avoid high contrast scenes or use graduated ND filters.

I often find I take better photos with my film cameras. Because film costs money and I tend to take more care in composing the image and not wasting film on trivial images. Images printed from film images have a different look to them (Including prints made from scans), and I often prefer this look, to prints made from my digital camera.

It is encouraging to hear so many photographers are still shooting 35mm film. I hope this continues well into the future.

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I am afraid that at this point I am just going to repeat one of the previous posters, but here is my two cents.

After 6 books on digital photography I can say that in 2008 there is really nothing in film that cannot be

replicated in digital (or surpassed), with proper hardware, software and knowledge. But I'd wish those Photoshop

book authors were more considerable of the reader and do not repeat each other so much on basic things that often

take the first third of every book. From digital speak, a film is just another "pre-set". However, a compact

digital camera is another pre-set (or two). To be more in control of your digital image, you need a camera with

RAW capture and face a steep learning curve with potentially not the best teachers around cluttering the horizon.

However, if one is not prepared to spend that much money on new hardware, or that much time on learning digital

exposure, white balance and RAW processing, what happens, is that "we go back to what we know....I am going back

to black" (Amy Winehouse song).

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