This is just depressing to me having literally grown up in a darkroom.
"For years my process looked like this: load film and take photos, ....[blah blah blah]... the exported image."
"At first this was an exciting process for me. Then as the number of rolls increased, so did my effort to do this for 36 frames per roll."
I shot black and white film sine the 70's, medium and 35mm. I would develop the negatives and prints myself. The complete process was a joy. I never printed every shot, but I put care into each shot I processed. I was careful when I took a photograph, because the cost limited how much I shot. This made me a better photographer.
I later started scanning my film with a Nikon CoolScan (this was in the late 90's) and i already started hating it. Then I started full digital and now I do not shoot anymore (I was semi professional with Art work published in national magazines).
"My part is now the part I can thoroughly enjoy, which is looking at the results I’ve snapped and finding inspiration to snap more."
Why do any of this just shoot digital if you do not care about the process?
Some aspects of the process seem more like labor than a form of self-expression. I think if you are into the limitations of shooting film photos it makes sense.
As someone who printed B&W in a darkroom until last year, yeah that. My sanity seems to have been improved by selling it all and just shooting digital.
Hell I even shoot jpegs with Nikon picture control baked in now. No post editing at all.
I agree in part, in that it is sad that this person does not have access to a darkroom. As someone who is also now shooting film and then camera scanning, I would love to have access to a darkroom. It's just a compromise film shooters have to make, and often at no fault to them. It's either too expensive (which the negatives already are), or too far away/too big to fit in modern homes, or more likely both.
We're just grateful that film is still available at all.
I found out that my dad managed to ram a full enlarger setup into a small bathroom before I was born. I found this out after telling him I'd managed to ram a full enlarger setup into a small bathroom. I may have to rotate on the spot in order to use the different trays and it may basically be a sauna, but I think I'm still having fun?
When I showed my Konica Hexar to a younger colleague, he said, but how do you get the pictures into the computer. It was like a world opened for him when I said that I don't.
Urgh yeah I hate scanning as well. I finally got back to printing with an enlarger and told an elderly customer of mine at my camera stall. He just replied with "Ah, so you're finally doing _real_ photography".
I have a really basic approach to photography, I think: if the photography itself is challenging and stimulating, such as birds in flight, then I want the camera to be as capable as possible and just get out of my way. If the photography is "simple", I want the camera to be as insane and complex as humanly possible.
Digital provides a back up for me. I’ve had negs go missing in the mail, sometimes they get damaged or scratched. So I pay for the basic scan from the lab and do it again at home. Sometimes friends will ask for a digital copy, or I need a copy for the web. I also can’t print enormous enlargements at home, so sometimes I will do a scan and (sacrilege) pay a printer to make a copy.
I don’t see how any of this detracts from the joy and presence of shooting analog, nor is it mutually exclusive with home developing and printing. Film certainly isn’t getting any cheaper either.
Thing is scanning provided a way to share with community for a brief decade when photo clubs and magazines have died out but photo sites and forums still lived.
Nowadays photography feels utterly pointless (doubly so with advent of genAI). And oddly (non-phone) digital camera photography feels more antiquated than shooting film.
Noaidi · · focus · HN ↗
"For years my process looked like this: load film and take photos, ....[blah blah blah]... the exported image."
"At first this was an exciting process for me. Then as the number of rolls increased, so did my effort to do this for 36 frames per roll."
I shot black and white film sine the 70's, medium and 35mm. I would develop the negatives and prints myself. The complete process was a joy. I never printed every shot, but I put care into each shot I processed. I was careful when I took a photograph, because the cost limited how much I shot. This made me a better photographer.
I later started scanning my film with a Nikon CoolScan (this was in the late 90's) and i already started hating it. Then I started full digital and now I do not shoot anymore (I was semi professional with Art work published in national magazines).
"My part is now the part I can thoroughly enjoy, which is looking at the results I’ve snapped and finding inspiration to snap more."
Why do any of this just shoot digital if you do not care about the process?
hankbond · · focus · HN ↗
sdcfgy · · focus · HN ↗
Hell I even shoot jpegs with Nikon picture control baked in now. No post editing at all.
I’m having fun again.
ares623 · · focus · HN ↗
We're just grateful that film is still available at all.
robotmay · · focus · HN ↗
wkjagt · · focus · HN ↗
robotmay · · focus · HN ↗
I have a really basic approach to photography, I think: if the photography itself is challenging and stimulating, such as birds in flight, then I want the camera to be as capable as possible and just get out of my way. If the photography is "simple", I want the camera to be as insane and complex as humanly possible.
esafak · · focus · HN ↗
Professional photographers always took lots of pictures. They just editors, retouchers, and an expense account at the lab.
I went digital and I never looked back. Scanners sucked the joy out of photography.
throwaway219450 · · focus · HN ↗
I don’t see how any of this detracts from the joy and presence of shooting analog, nor is it mutually exclusive with home developing and printing. Film certainly isn’t getting any cheaper either.
varjag · · focus · HN ↗
Nowadays photography feels utterly pointless (doubly so with advent of genAI). And oddly (non-phone) digital camera photography feels more antiquated than shooting film.