Shooting film again

Last night my 6 year old was reading her school book. After the story she asked, 'What is a film? Is it like a battery?'

I've only been shooting digital for 2 or 3 years!!

So I dug out my AE-1 and today have bought a roll of colour negative film and a couple of rolls of black and white film. Picking up the AE-1 I was surpised at how small it is compared to the 5D and 1Ds3. I've been thining about a voigtlander R3a or Zeiss ikon, but tbh am still hoping that zeiss will come up with a full frame DRF using the new sony chip... Perhaps someone will feel able to comment on the likelihood of the digital zeiss (given the known technical issues) and on the relative image quality of scanned 35mm film (say from an epson v750) compared with 5D/1Ds3 capture.

Anyway, as I no longer have an enlarger, since I lent it to my younger brother and it disapeared, I will probably scan the negs on my old epson 3950 (I think) - probably not achieve that good a resolution, but at least it points the way.

Previously, we have made pinhole cameras from shoe boxes and food tins, using multigrade as the recording medium

Mike

Mike,

That's great!

Why? Let's rule out being a sports shooter or doing fashion or news since they expect the immediacy of digital. film is for slowing us down to be more relaxed, thoughtful and to choose shoots more carefully as it uses up material whereas digital is all reusable and hundreds of shots are easily accumulated effortlessly.

Film puts one in a different time frame and mental space these days. At least is you are like me and want to make each shot count.

Film, you'll find it like going camping, walking with a dog in the woods, fishing with your son or just staring at the stars on a moonlit night. It slows things down a cleanses the mind of redundancies. Moreover it's fun. first you will be intrigued by the difference in physicality of the medium, the look of the pictures. There is something complete about it.

Developing B&W is so easy. Rodinol or Dektol are great developers. It all works!

HP5 is a good start off film and it's ASA (ISO) 400 so you have some latitude. Get yourself a red, yellow, green and orange filter and do a search under B&W and filters and refresh your brain. It's not expensive to drop of film at a lab and they will include scanning at a small price. Desktop scanners are very inexpensive and will work pretty well. Use Vuescan software.

Asher

Cheers Asher - it's all taking me back to when I was about 8 or 9 and my grand dad taught me how to develop black and white. My early steps with his rangefinder etc.

Looking forward to it really.

Mike