Howdy, and welcome to the Wednesday Rundown. With living in NYC I see a surprising number of people shooting with film cameras, I even own a couple of old school polaroid cameras myself. While most of these shooters are wearing tight jeans and odd facial hair, I wonder if film is already dead? We have phones now that can fake almost any film under the sun, who would shoot film? This week I have found a couple of BTS video of Film shoots. Do you shoot with film at all anymore or is it only the hipsters? Please lay down your vote on the poll in the post. If you have a video that you think we might like to post, please click on "submit content" above.
Polaroid Photo shoot:
A shoot done with a couple of Polaroid cameras. There are a couple of different types of Polaroid films used to get the different effects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sANpUuHklU
Film and Fashion:
This is a great video, and one that the photographers are shooting with old school film cameras. Just a great video that might make you want to try that camera sitting on your shelf just for decor.
Tabletop Food Shoot:
A sweet little food shoot to get you hunger going this hump day.
This is a very touchy subject, the never ending type of topic that has people on both sides ralied up claiming one is better than the other. Specially if you go into the "art area", on the "comercial area" film has niche uses specially if you have access to its digital counterpart.
Film died the day I got a digital camera for me. Pointless effort and expense IMO. I've spent enough of my life jiggling chemicals in darkrooms, viva digital.
these vidz are hipsters vidz.
I was shooting film along before there was hipsterz....
It's not the arrow, it's the Indian. End of story.
Yeah they are a little hipstered out on the videos. It is hard to find BTS videos of film shooters....
I think some of you have some film cameras you still like to mess around with.
I don't care what a person uses to get "THE SHOT". Film, digital, paint brush and canvas, a pencil n paper....
Who am I to judge how they do their own things?
If it works for them, I believe they should do as they want.
( That's part of the enjoyment of doing what we do, doing it our own way)
Also I wanted to add, what would happen if we lost that one thing we all take for granted, Electricity.
How would we capture the images if that was gone?
If it was taken away from us, we'd not have digital photography. We'd be scampering for the older film bodies that can shoot without a battery,wouldn't we?
Just a thought folks....
@Killer Images, well said.
I definitely have mine ready when the apocalypse strikes :)
On another note, if you shoot film just to be trendy and cool and don't get the best possible results then you're a hipster. If you shoot film because it makes your images better, then by all means, shoot film.
@Killer Images,
and I'm not talking to you Killer Images, even though it sounded like it.
Don't get me started on hipsters. Trying to turn extinct fads into the mainstream again.
I'm all for shooting film, I've got quite a collection of large/medium/35mm format cameras that i'll use from time to time, but I don't take them out to use to look "hip" in front of my friends and film a BTS shoot.
I bet more than half of these new "hipsters" don't even know how to use a enlarger.... then again more than half of photographers these days don't either.
While looking at Flickr galleries, I have been fooled more than a time to two trying to figure out what kind of film was used for the shot to find out it was a D90 + photoshop. That being said, there is something about knowing your shooting medium has a finite number of exposures and each one costs a little bit puts a different spin on my photo outings. I find that I am more careful and more composed with my F100 than my digital bodies. Would I use it for a commercial shoot? no, but learning/educational/personal for sure.
I shoot film sometimes, but I think especially in the Fine Art world, you are seeing a large amount of people using film or even going back to wet plate photography and platinum printing. Some artists, like Sally Mann, have been using it for a long time. To this day used Polaroids can be pretty expensive on ebay. I do miss the darkroom myself.
This is where I get my new Polaroid film. Not cheap. http://the-impossible-project.com/ They have a store in SOHO also. Very cool people that love taking photos.
The last video is the only one about really using film, Film, at 24 fps, is still worth the extra cost to many advertisers, and producers of feature films.
Nice post Jerrit :)
The Canon EOS 7n looks like an EOS 20D. So does that make me a hipster, if people can't tell I'm shooting film?
If I want a photo that looks like it was shot with P3200, I find it a lot easier to load P3200 into a film camera, than to spend a lot of time in PS to achieve almost the same look from a digital file. YMMV
@ c.d.embrey - Not to mention you can use your fancy IS, USM glass!
When my father passed away I came across the following in a closet: Leica M5 (circa 1973), Pentax Spotmatic (1964), Kodak Retina (1959?), and a Roleil 35-- ALL of which are still in perfect working order. While true that if electricity somehow disappeared one day a HUGE percentage of today's photographers would be totally lost, the fact is digital is here to stay. I do think, however, that photographers do themselves a disservice by not understanding the evolution of our craft. Here's a challenge-- once a week, go our and shoot like you're shooting film. The rules are: (1) Tape over your LCD- no peeking!, (2) No more than two frames of the same image- less guessing!, (3) You must shoot 24 or 36 frames, (4) You have to get your images printed at a drugstore or lab before you look at them. You'd be surprised how much this exercise on a regular basis helps you get your images right in the camera, without as much reliance on Photoshop.
@JeffG,
Great idea Jeff
What is the name of the song on the Film and Fashion video playing in the background?
@ Kyle. An EOS 85mm f1.8 is as fancy as it gets. 8-D
Film has a way of focusing me, and I prefer bellows to digital perspective correction, so I use it for outdoor photography primarily. I think that the investment in the film somehow calls me to invest more in each shot
sooo glad this is addressed film will never die 35mm is too popular and 120 digital is too expensive and they dont make a 5x4 sensor yet people get better results from film because they thing about the shot more because it cant erase
great wednesday rundown
some people have way too much money = to shoot a pretty bad looking hamburger
I still shoot some film. For me it has a lot to do with the process. I enjoy working in the darkroom. I have both a 35mm rangefinder and a 4x5 view camera. The rangefinder is great because it's small, discreet, and you don't have to dig through menu options to get at the manual exposure controls the way you do with most compact digital cameras. On the other hand shooting with a large format camera slows things down to the point where you think about every detail involved in exposing each sheet.
Unrelated to film/digital, I would love to see the final video from the food shoot!
@Jeremy,
yes, me too! The making of is useless without the result!