Photography, not something I have blogged about for a while but something I have been doing even if I haven’t got around to updating my flickr account (http:\\www.flickr.com/archerctb/) for a while. I have plenty to put up there but I just haven’t had the time recently.
At the moment I am questioning where to go next with my photography in the whole ‘digital vs film’ debate. I have just started a new job having been unemployed for eight months before doing so and the truth is that film photography just ended up becoming too expensive for me. The cost of film, developing (or chemicals if home developing) and so on just became prohibitive so I ended up doing much more digital photography.
I still shoot digital in much the same way as I shoot film really, I’m not someone who just snaps away and taking twenty versions of each shot. Each shot is thought about and done carefully, sure I may sometimes take it twice just to be on the safe side but that is about it. Apart from some exposure comensation on shots I don’t tend to do a lot of post production either. I also love to use my M42 lenses on my Nikon DSLR.
The truth is that I cannot afford Nikon lenses that will give good Bokeh so I use the old lenses for their Bokeh and the look they give the images in general. True, I lose infinity focus because I don’t use an adapter with glass in it (I find it loses some of the look of the old lenses) but I can still get good images. The images my old 50mm Tessar and 135mm Jupiter 37A give are completely different to my Nikon 35-70mm and my Sigma 70-300mm, not that I am knocking the modern lenses as I love them too but I use them all for different things.
I am always going to shoot some film as I love it too much, the look of the images is totally different to digital, but I have learned a new appreciation for digital photography over the last several months. So here is what I am considering doing:
1) Shooting film as my ‘experimental’ and ‘fun’ shots. To be honest, I have had to sell all my medium format cameras to get some money while unemployed so I am down to 35mm now and I think I will stick with that. Expired, redscale, cross processed and other film experiments can be fun sometimes and are best for some projects – sure you can recreate similar (but not identical) effects in post production of digital images but I quite like the unpredictability of using film for this. I will also shoot some black and white to develop myself, more for the sheer fun of doing it than anything else.
2) Use digital for my more ‘serious’ work. Ok, I am not planning to try and become a professional or anything like that but I do like to try and take good pictures sometimes (if you have seen my flickr feed please stop laughing). The only issue with this is my digital camera. Bought second hand as a camera to take on holiday my Nikon D70 is not exactly up to date and real high quality. It doesn’t have a video mode or a black and white mode, the metering is usually slightly off, the auto focus is hit and miss and it occassionally just decides it won’t recognise memory cards unless you take them out and reinsert them half a dozen times, even if it has been recognising it fine for the last few hours. Both my own Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom phone and the iPhone they have given me at work produce images with a higher MP count and they both use technology 10 years ahead of the D70 so they can (if used carefully) surpass it in quality. What I really need is to upgrade if I am going to try and use the DSLR as my main camera, that is a big layout of cash though. Although I should point out I am talking about getting something like a D3200 or a second hand D5200 so we are talking about £350ish rather than the £1,500+ you can pay for a new DSLR.
So, what do I do? Stick with the ongoing costs of film or try and make the one big layout to improve my DSLR?
by: CT Brown