How many here disappointed with digital slr's and going back to film?

[paq]

No kidding, i LOVE darkrooms, and i only do BW prints in darkrooms (there is only so much creativity you can gain by printing your own color, i believe, at least for straight prints and not a cross process or something) and while all that is fun and smells great and allows you a tremendous amount of creative play, it is still MUCH easier and faster and better for me to just do it on photoshop or digital.

 

Seriously, The chemical and paper costs for an 8x10 print are much more than if i just get a decent lab to print up my digital file.

 

so will i use film...OH hell yeah, there are simply some things you cannot do with digital right now..wide angles, perfect skin tones, that nice shading effect, special effect films, IR pictures (at least vs my 300d), and just a ton of stuff, but for most of my shooting, i will stick with digital. Instant feedback is worth quite a bit..

[Spearhead]

I'm sitting in here in Hanoi with my Mamiya 7 knowing I will never travel again with film. My color film is too slow for most of the day and I didn't bring enough black and white and can't find 120 in Hanoi. The streets are too crowded for tripod use and I need 1600 at night. It's been an eye opener.

 

The digital workflow is much better than film. No chemicals, no scanning, that's heaven.

 

Next time, it's all digital...

[steven_alexander1]

Yes sir, this is high speed color film please hand inspect it, yes

all 100 rolls of film are for my use, I'm not importing for resell.

The smell is gone...working in the lightroom. Oh, this should be

photographed in high speed b&w or was that color trans, YOU

LOST the slides.

 

My eyes no longer ache, much less my back, after several hours

over the light table sorting hundreds of images and then hours

labeling,filing, packaging, duping(againing labeling) recording

and them packaging for shipment to clients.

 

Images are as good as with film, no hassles with security at

airports, no problems with wrong film(honestly with film rarely

really a problem), no long hours in darkroom, much streamlined

back offfice proceedure and filing, tracking and all form of the

commerice part of the process are much easier.

 

I could not go back. Nostaliga is fine for the bar after hours, but

not for running the business part of being a photographer. I've

been a paid photographer since late 1950's.

[eric friedemann]

Todd, I like the Oly C-5050 a lot. I've sold two to friends who love them.

 

I've been eyeing the Oly 5060 as a P&S camera with a 27mm-up zoom that can shoot in RAW. FYI, I have Photoshop CS and talked to Adobe about CS handling the Oly RAW mode. The Adobe tech guy said that Pshop CS will support Oly RAW files with a free (to Pshop CS owners) download. So, if you want to shoot RAW and squeeze a little extra sharpness out of the C-5050 while using Photoshop, you'd be covered.

[glen peterson]

Been shooting Digital for 4years now, Film for about 25years. Not giving up either of them anytime soon.

[steve_hovland]

I spent most of the summer playing with my first digital, but now I am back to working 35mm and MF film cameras as well.

 

I don't find it hard to edit my digital captures. Windows explorer does either thumbnails or filmstrip, and you can throw out the garbage pretty quickly.

[mike_morgan1]

I am keeping my film cameras, but will only use them for black and white or the rare super wide angle shot I just have to have.

 

Digital is great. White balance is an outstanding feature.

 

Film at a consumer lab is more expensive than digital.

 

Worse, if you're picky, you want your film processed dip and dunk so that you can scan it without turning on ICE.

 

Film is too expensive. With all the money I save with my 10D, I might be able to afford a 1DS.

 

However, I might go back to slides once in awhile because my scanner does great with those, and I can print the digital images for $0.19 to $0.35/4x6 (not bad). But scanning is too labor intensive if you ask me.

 

Ideally, if I could get my slides scanned for $0.50 each at 16 bits and 2700++ dpi, that would be great.

 

It's not going to happen.

 

Film is going to get more expensive as the masses move away from it. And only wealthy die hards are going to use it.

 

I see more and more computer illiterate people brining in their flash cards to stores. They don't even need to be computer literate. For $130 they can buy a flash card that will store tons of photos. They can delete the onese they don't like using the camera's interface. It is cheaper, and produces outstanding 4x6" prints, which is what most people want anyway.

 

In a year, 1G flash cards will probably cost $99.

 

Film is going to go the wrote of the LP.

[arunas_salkauskas]

I'm not selling my Elan 7 film body just yet, but the results I'm getting with my 10D are simply way better than what I was getting with the Elan.

 

One cause for that might be that there was no 'kit' lens with the 10D, so I thought I should finally shell out for a better lens. But we also tend to end up using the photographs in digital form and scanning prints is pathetic. A good transparency scanner costs a fair bit and getting it done professionally by somebody with a drum scanner costs even more. So now we're skipping a few generations. We haven't even bothered to get any of the 10D images printed yet - but that will have to happen.

 

The other thing is that with film, the turn-around time was typically so long, weeks even, from taking the exposure to getting a print that I was never sure what I had done (yep, sloppy - no records). Then the lab goes and compensates for your mistakes so you think you're doing ok until you go to a different lab. With digital, I know within seconds whether I got the lighting the way I wanted it and whether it's sharp. I also have control over the whole exposure - if I want a dark image, I can get a dark image, not a uniform grey. Of course, I could have just gone to a better shop...

 

I've waited eagerly for about 5 years for either my income to increase sufficiently to be able to afford a dSLR, or for the price to come down enough. We met in the middle.

[andr3w]

I am the digital tech at a lab that does custom work for a good number of pros. I

LOVE digital printing, and I LOVE shooting slides. I have never, ever thought about

only doing one or the other. I have never seen the point of asking the question "film

vs. digital". Use the best of both worlds, and use their prespective strenghts to your

advantage. Maybe digital has more going for it grand total. I have never meet a

photojournalist that wants to go back to film. I do know at least 6 wedding

photographers that would NEVER shoot a wedding with digital. I aslo know a pro that

shot around 600 shots during a 10 hour wedding with the 10D. It turned out that

after changing lenses early on in the shoot, dust found it's way to the CMOS and quite

noticeable black dots filled about 550 shots. It took over 30 hours to fix the photos

and that little "glich" in DSLR's according to Canon is not a design flaw.

 

I have seen the canon 10D butcher a shot that a crome can handle. I also see it the

other way around. Film still owns B&W.

 

Why only have one way of doing things?

 

ADAPTABILITY & VERSATILITY.

This is what makes you a creative person, not your $1500 plastic light box.

 

What fun is only using one camera?

 

Grab your digital when the situation calls for it.

Grab your film camera when the situation calls for it..

 

I love my OM-2, I love my Elan 7e w/ "L" glass. one cost me $100 and the other

$1,000. I use them both.