Something old…… or not ?

Lots of photographers started with shooting analogue and I’m no exception.
I remember vividly that my parents and grandparents always were busy with photography and of course they had their own darkrooms, first only B&W but later on also color, and I loved it…. So I guess that’s were I got bitten by the bug called photography.

I’ve shot many rolls of film as hobby on my Practica and Kodak cameras, mostly of ducks, cats, nature and streets.
Nothing too spectaculair.

Then came digital
Wow, that’s cool you don’t have to change rolls and you can shoot lots and lots of images wow.
Well as with most wows there is always a catch.
My first point and shoot camera was awesome, although very expensive and less than 1MP, but I still loved it and took it with us on our honeymoon, and to be honest although the resolution is totally laughable now the quality was not even that bad. My next camera was more advanced but I more and more missed that great DOF I got from my 35mm practica, but hey what can you do digital is IT………
I tried one more P&S camera, the HP850 and although this was a more advanced camera with aperture settings (what I wanted) I still could not get that nice DOF I wanted back, so I decided to look further……

Soon I ended up with the Canon 10D, my first digital SLR and man did I love it, the 10D was followed but the 20D and after a few years I decided it was time to go to Full Frame and enter the original 5D, times were perfect and everything was great.

Well until I got my hands on a medium format camera, listen to me NEVER but I mean NEVER try that ?
You will fall in love, wake up in the middle of the night craving for that camera, and to be honest all my 5D files looked flat and soft. So I upgraded to a Mamiya 645AFD/II which was a nice camera, for the back I first tried the ZD from Mamiya but I did not like the quality of that back and within a few weeks I got my money back and I upgraded to the Leaf Aptus22 which till today I still love (although I upgraded to an AptusII7 for other reasons).

Back in time
When I taught the workshops in Los Angeles one of my students pointed me towards someone who was selling his analogue back for the 645AFD/II and because the pricing was right I decided to buy it and experiment with film again. I bought my first roll of MF film at Sammy’s and shot some graffiti and developed the film the same day. That was the begin of a strange love affair with film.

Bad is good
Somehow with digital you always know what you’re gone get (with a good workflow).
With analogue this is also true for many photographers who stacked their fridges with the same stock to get the same outcome over and over. But to be honest when I shoot digital I’m 100% satisfied with the results and there are hardly any surprises…… So were am I going with this story.

When I dove into the analogue again I decided to first buy some different roles of film and just experiment with the different looks you could get, and let myself be surprised every time the roles came back, see something I like and maybe buy some more roles of film. But in the end I ended up hunting down film that was over the date and I love underexposing it, or overexposing and just see what happens, luckily we still have a lab were I can order my negatives to be done manually with the speed I tell them. It’s never 100% perfect compared to digital but somehow I just love the outcome but sometimes I also think it was a waste of time and money.

B&W
What I love however about shooting analogue is B&W.
There are great filters like NIK silverfx or Alienskin but when I load the Mamiya with a 3200ISO Illford or a 400ASA Tmax I know I’m gone fall in love with the outcome. In this blog post you can see some images that have one thing in common, they are all shot on film, and as you can see they are not perfect. All the film is over the date, a little or a lot. Most are underexposed and corrected in development, or in other words this is just my fun pool. I will always shoot analogue and digital from the same scene to make 100% sure I also get the digital files.

6×7 the real deal
Although 6×4.5 is great, I really got a feel for shooting analogue when I bought the RZ67ProII, a monster camera that to be honest I only bought for shooting film, nothing else. Well that was until I looked through the finder and thought that digital would be incredible with this camera, the lenses are mega sharp and the contrast is great, and to be honest I just love the way the shutter sounds and the camera looks. The main advantage from shooting MF digital is that you just remove the back from the 645 and mount it on the 6×7 (welcome crop factor, ouch). I stil love to shoot film with the 645 but I actually shoot most of my film with the RZ67ProII of course, when you get the film back from the lab the large images jump of the film. The first time I got the film back the man behind the counter wanted to look at them and was in awe of the colors (slidefilm) and the sharpness.

Scanning and polaroid
Many people ask me what I do to get the images in the PC/Mac.
Well I keep it simple. I use an Epson V700 for scanning the negatives/slides but I do use a betterscanning unit to get more sharpness in the scans, the original Epson holder is nice but far from perfect. And as mentioned before, shooting film is my “fun” and the scans from the Epson can be printed to A2 size without a problem so that’s good enough for me.

The most recent addition to my film shooting experience is the polaroid back for the RZ67ProII.
When I grew up my parents used polaroids and I did have one laying around in the studio for ages but never used it anymore, expect maybe as a prop, but with the new found love for analogue I decided to buy some film for it (still available at that time) and fell in love with the instant “mess” you could get from the polaroids. The version for the RZ however really surprised me, I’ve scanned some polaroids and they make great A4 prints compared to the consumer polaroid I have here that’s a huge difference. At the moment polaroid is saved by the impossible project and I still have to order something from them and keep telling myself I will soon……….

I don’t believe in the stories that analogue is better than digital, both are different but when handled correctly I strongly feel that digital is much more “perfect”, film however has that “rebel” look, that unpredictable cast, that amazing hues, the amazing “noise” in B&W and the incredible….. oh well…… you know what I mean.

If you have an old camera lying around, load it up with some overtime film and shoot some images.
Send them to me and I will post them on the blog, if you’re an avid film shooter, send me some files and I will also post them.
If you’ve never shot film, buy a cheap camera and have fun I tell you you will love it.
When shooting ASA3200 film try to push yourself to experiment with very little light, the last image for example was shot with just a bare lightbulb.

I will be adding responses from you guys here…..