Shooting film ...?

<p>Hello.</p>

<p>I have both an EOS 1v (film) and an EOS 40D. I enjoy shooting both of them and I love the fact that I can swap lenses between the two bodies.</p>

<p>My wife and I are planning a trip to Europe and I'm trying to figure out which camera to take. She advocates the 40D but I still like some aspects of film shooting (especially slide film). With vacations shots, I usually like to be a bit more creative and patient in my photography and have tended to take along film cameras and shoot different types of slide film, depending on the subject (scenery or people shots). I find that fun, challenging and rewarding. For family activities, baseball games and holidays and the like, I shoot away on the 40D and have consistently enjoyed the images it produces and the convenience of the "instant" shots. Seems like a win-win for me.</p>

<p>In retrospect, my conversation with my wife was an interesting one and motivated me to post this question to the forum. Without turning this into film vs. digital debate (please, please do NOT do that), I am interested in how many people with digital SLRs decide to pick up their film cameras once in a while and for what reasons/situations. I find myself lacking good reason to shoot film except that, well, darn-it, I still LIKE the look of slides and hearing the film transport whirl after I take the shot. (OTOH, I do not enjoy lead-lined film bags and arguing with the Xray techs at the airports ...)</p>

<p>Thanks for your input. Oh, and I still haven't figured out which camera to take to Europe but that Provia 100F sitting in my fridge is pretty darn tempting. (But then, so's the 8GB SD card ... ;-)</p>

<p>Decisions, decisions!</p>

<p>If I felt like you, I'd take both of them...</p>

<p>why not take both? I have a 5dmkii and still have my old eos 1 (the very original 1st) that I use to learn photography back in high school when we did B/W film. I still use B/W film today but not as often because I have to drive to my local community college to develop and print. If I had space in my house I would definately purchase a B/W and color enlarger and setup a dark room, but I am just dreaming. If my dream came true I would see myself shooting more film for fun. What I love the most is that I can exchange my trusty lenses between bodies.</p>

<p>Take both to Europe, a spare body is not big and 100 speed slide film will not be damaged by the modern X macines as long as you pack it in the carry on.<br>

I have a DSLR but use film much more, because it is more fun and makes better looking prints.</p>

<p>I have found that as my collection grows with digital I worry about storage. Backing it up on disc, harddrive or whatever medium and hope it does not fail or degrade over time. I never had to worry about that when I shot everything on slides. Why not take both, if you find that great shot, shoot in both formats then you never have to worry over the years if the disk is scratched or still will boot. Enjoy the trip heading that way this fall, Ireland and the Uk.</p>

<p>Europe entails lots of shooting in narrow alleys, pubs, churches and museums, most of which are too dark for slide film. And most churches and museums don't allow tripods or flash. So being able to crank ISO on the 40D will be a godsend. Last summer I spent 3 weeks in Europe and shot at ISO 640-1250 most of the time. My EF-S 17-55 2.8 IS USM was usually wide open or only stopped down slightly. Having IS really helped in all those dim locations. If I had brought Provia 100F I'd only have pictures from outdoors...</p>

<p>I have thousands and thousands of slides from many years that I have digitized, slowly and laboriously. I'm not likely to shoot a lot more slide film, much as I love Kodachrome.<br>

Nowdays, most of the film I shoot is C/N (and I'm working on getting back into the lab for negatives in B&W), which is scanned directly from the film, so all my prints and images are digital now.</p>

<p>It's because I like my old film <em>cameras</em> so well that I still shoot film, not the other way around. I love them as wonderful little machines, gears, springs, and all.</p>

<p>There's nothing like the sound of a Contax-D SLR in the morning. It sounds like victory over the complexity of photography.</p>

<p>I shoot 6X6 film with an old Rolleiflex MX Tessar f/3.5 using Fuji Astia 100 color reversal flim. I use it like a view camera and scan the images to make black and white images using Photoshop CS4. My problem is that the processing was terrible on my last roll. I am in need of a reliable E-6 processing house. Any ideas?<br>

I also love, and cannot part with, my Leica Ms and Rs.<br>

Take the 40D and use a tripod to slow down - it's more utilitarian. Digital images are great.</p>

<p>I do shoot film regulary. Mostly 4x5 but I shoot alot of low light stuff with my Leica IIIf and 3200 film. Digital is good but with the size and weight and a really good scanner I can bang out much better pictures with film in a dingy bar than with my 1D MK2.</p>

<p>I shoot film occaisionally and always take one with me when I travel, even though I am mostly digital these days. Somethign like an EOS 300 is very small and light and will take the same picture as a 1V in most travel situations.</p>

<p>I have an ELAN 7NE and EOS 30D. I shoot film for my studio work when I know I will get the shot in less than a roll. When I go on vacaton I like Digital to know I have the shot for sure right then on the spot. I then immediately transfer to laptop and burn a copy to DVD. I can now reuse the CF's and go shoot happy capturing anythin I like. With film you will have to be more conservative and therefore probably miss many opportunities. If I had the choice both if only one then digital.</p>

 

<p>If you like shooting film, bring both cameras. On a resent trip to Tuscany I brought my 400D alongside my Yashica 35 rangefinder and shot some rolls of Ilford XP2. I will be going to Berlin this summer, and plan to bring both the dSLR and my Yashica TL-Electro SLR.<br>

Interestingly, some of the best shots from Tuscany was actually on film :-).</p>

<p>Having shot film for nearly fifty years (and yes, I did start young) during which time it was the only, or latterly, in the early days of digital SLRs, the only affordable, option, I did one major trip with my EOS-1V and my (then new) 20D. I never took another photograph on film and sold the 1V (with great regret, because it was a superb camera) while I could still get a half-way decent price for it. I did not have too much difficulty learning to live with 1.6-factor, especially as lenses like the 10~22 and 60/2.8 became available, but once the price of the 5D had dropped to a level acceptable to me, I moved to a dual-format setup. Whilst I am convinced of the merits of having a FF body, although not to the exclusion of 1.6-factor, I have never felt the slightest desire to continue using film. That's not a prescription for you, Carl, but you wanted to hear a range of opinions and experiences!</p>

<p>Isn't your trip to Europe the perfect moment to see how you like FF digital? If you don't want to spend the money that a 5DII costs, a good s/h 5D could be the way to go.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I am interested in how many people with digital SLRs decide to pick up their film cameras once in a while</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I went one stage further. After getting fed up with the amount of time sat in front of a computer, I gave my Nikon D100 to my wife. I only use film now except for the odd snap to illustrate a point in a forum post or web page. I now have 30+ film cameras to keep me busy.</p>

<p>If there are two of you going and there are two cameras, why not take one each?</p>

<p>My 2cents.......<br>

<br />I started doing photography about 45 years ago (started when I was about 11 years old). Got very serious about it while I was in the Navy. Navy pay being what it was at the time presented budget challenges. How can you try lots of different creative techniques on a given shot with very little budget (my net pass was about 500 / month)</p>

<p>Along the way I purchased both a Pentax 35mm and eventuall 6x45 camera, various lenses. My first trip to NZ I took 15 rolls of 120 film thinking that will be way too much film, I ended up shooting those 15 rolls in 3 days, then had to scramble to find 120 film in the rural parts of NZ and pay some exhorbitant prices along the way.</p>

<p>In 35mm I almost always shot Kodachrome 64, in 645 I would shoot color negative film.</p>

<p>I'm someone who will sit find something I want to take a picture of, and have been known to wait for several hours waiting for the right light, clouds, people to move, etc. Of course I take pics along the way because you never know if conditions are going to get better or worse. I also tried various filters (I had a large Cokin filter collection).</p>

<p>All that film translates into issues of cost and storage.</p>

<p>When the first 2 meg Kodak camera came out (I think it was the 260?) I bought it, tried it and found myself over time using the film cameras less and less. Once I bought a Sony F828, I stopped film all together. Today I have a Canon 5D Mark II. </p>

<p>Best example I can give you was in NZ, shooting pics of a pod of Dolphins out in the bay in Kaikoura. I was shooting with a 200mm lens. The dolphins move QUICK, I wanted to get some pics of them as they jump out of the water. If I shot film, I would have shot 3 rolls of slides (maybe a 100 shots) and hoped for the best. With digital I probably shot over 500 pics and had a much wider range of choices.</p>

<p>I no longer use my Cokin filters. The only filter I use on the camera is a polarizer. I found a set of Cokin filters as a plug in for Photoshop.</p>

<p>Bottome line I haven't shot film in nearly 5-6 years and haven't looked back with regret.</p>

<p>

<p>My wife and I both had film SLRs and now both have DSLRs. The last film we shot was in 2004, when I got my wife a 20D. The main reason for the switch to digital was the time it was taking to scan all the photographs.<br>

　<br>

As time has gone on digital has gotten easier and film harder. We now carry many GB of memory with us, enough for around 3,600 shots, figure the same as 100 rolls of film. The last time we traveled with film it was a pain, we had to carry all the rolls with us to keep them from going through the luggage scanner.<br>

　<br>

As a final note, both of our photographs improved a lot once we switched to digital.</p>

</p>

For the same reasons you list, I always take my film body with me on holidays, not the digital.

<p>I always grab both. I love the ease of using the 40D or Pentax K20. But I almost always have the Bessa R2a or Minolta x700 loaded with film.</p>

<p>I use both film and digital equally (not in number of photos but in shooting time :)).</p>

<p>I develop my own B&W film shot in old fully manual cameras, in which I really like the look of (grainy) film compared to digital. I like the craftmanship feel of old cameras as well as the fun of home-developing film.</p>

<p>On the other hand, for fast moving action the use of a lens with USM/HSM is much appreciated over manual focussing. Also, the instant feedback helps a lot in e.g. difficult lighting.</p>

<p>On holidays, I prefer digital, (1) I can see the picture after taking (2) its easier to shoot a few thousands digital images, than take a huge number of film rolls (also, developing e.g. 50 rolls of film myself after return and then scanning them all takes a huge amount of time, compared to the 2-3 rolls of film I usually shoot per month). However, I take a film body as backup, for if the digital body fails...and still shoot a few rolls of film just for the fun of it.</p>

<p>I was in no hurry to change from film to digital. Afterall, I had used film cameras since the late 1960s. Two years ago I got my first digital camera. Haven't taken a single film photo since then. I like the ability to tweek the photos on the computer, crop as I wish, share on-line with friends, create programs on the computer, and use my own backgrounds on the computer. No more sending off for processing and a week later gettting transparencies back, wondering now what do I do with them, or prints, also wondering what to do with them).</p>

<p>Carl, as you said you enjoy the slower process of creating a photo with your film camera and you use your digital for snap shots. As a suggestion, why not bring both your film body + various films for your creative adventure and a small pocket size digital for simple vacation snap shots. At least this way you will have the opportunity to carry less weight and much more film.</p>

<p>Fab beat me to it. I prefer to shoot medium format film, but I still carry a small digital compact in the bag too for the typical holiday snapshots. It takes up hardly any room and I can also use it as a 'digital polaroid' when using the Hasselblad.</p>

<p>I use two Canons -- one digital, one film -- and interchangeable lenses and, when I really want to go first class, add my Leica M6 and its Summicron 50mm for slides.</p>

<p>If you decide to bring your film camera ou might need one of those X-ray proof carrying cases for your film. These days when I travel, I only bring my Digital camera. it's allot less hassles.</p>

<p>Since I bought my 5D I shoot less film, but I still like to occasionally run a roll of Provia or Velvia through my Elan. Technical arguments aside, I like the look of a slide under a loupe or projected on the wall. There's just something special about it that's hard to explain. That said, if you can only take one rig on your trip I suggest taking the 40D since you have the flexiblity of hand holding at higher ISOs, and you don't have to worry about buying more film if/when you run out. Slide film isn't exactly easy to find in stores these days.</p>