gdanmitchell
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 p.3 #3 · What camera to upgrade from 5d classic | |
anthonygh wrote:
gdanmitchell......Hi.
I guess...coming from an art background where I would think carefully about investing many hours of time on one painting (read image) the ability to make say a dozen careful compositions in a day is a luxury.....two dozen.....hard to cope.
Photography is not painting. There is a whole very interesting philosophical discussion we could get into about that - a discussion that fascinates me - but for now, let's just say that while photography and "painting" have each done a lot to inform the other medium, you might as well say "It takes me two months to build a home so making a photograph every week is a luxury."
There can be advantages to working slowly and methodically on a single photograph. I do it, too. There can also be advantages to working quickly and instinctively and producing many in short order. (This is, as you no doubt know, also true in painting...) While one can choose to slow down and work in the manner of view camera photographers with a DSLR or MF digital system, one cannot speed up and work in the manner of the DSLR with the view camera. Now, if your choice is to work exclusively in the slow and contemplative manner, that is absolutely fine - but that is not a function of choosing to work with film gear rather than digital... it is a choice about your work process.
As for using a V700......I would suggest anyone not getting exceptional prints from MF scans from that machine is doing something wrong. I had to spend hours fine tuning the height adjusters and scanning process.....but I have A3 prints from 35mm emulsions that easily compare with A3 prints from a 40D. I don't print any larger but have severely cropped MF scans.
The V700 is very fine flatbed scanner. However, all of the folks I know who are doing high end scans of their MF and LF film/negatives are using drum scanners for that work. You and I both know the costs involved in that work. (For the record, "A3 prints from a 40D" are considerably short of what we regard as our standard of technical quality today - and if, after all of the work involved in shooting film and the expense of processing and the effect on your workflow and the need to carefully scan, the outcome is "compare with A3 prints from a 40D," I'm afraid that this doesn't exactly speak enthusiastically for the value of that approach on the basis of image quality. (Your preference for the "look" of film or your fascination with film technology might, but those are distinctly different things.)
As for overall costs (and I am talking from a B+W perspective here- I don't think I would go back to colour film for costs and convenience).....one can buy and dev a lot of film for the price / depreciation costs of a decent FF DSLR.
You are right that almost no one is doing an entirely film-based color process at this point. There are a few folks who shoot LF film and then scan it.
On the basis of actual monetary cost I would challenge your math regarding costs. A good friend who moved, over a period of decades, from shooting LF BW (at the time he worked with A Adams), to shooting LF color and mastering the dye transfer printing process, to scanning LF color images and printing digitally, to shooting with MF digital backs, and most recently to adding a full-frame DSLR to his workflow... was once talking with me about the very issue of cost. With his expensive MF digital system (much more expensive at that time than now) he figured he was saving many thousands of dollars in film, processing, and scanning costs. But even more important to him, he was able to optimize the quality of his work and more effectively achieve his vision with digital capture in that he can review in the field, he can try multiple interpretations of subjects where one or two might have sufficed in past, and he can shoot certain subjects that simply were not amenable to film work. A year or two ago he would still occasionally wax poetic about film, saying things like "I think digital makes it too easy." A month or two ago, someone asked him if he was interested in every shooting film again. He paused for a brief moment, then simply said, No."
Again, absolutely beautiful work has been done using film, and still is being done using film. (As I write this, I'm thinking of John Sexton, who still shoots BW film virtually exclusively.) I'm not anti-film. I am perplexed and sometimes a bit frustrated by those who seem to have this quaint notion that the only way to produce great photographic art is to use older processes. The history of photography does not support that odd notion at all.
I'd question your math a bit regarding costs, too. My DSLR cost me a bit more than $2000. That's about $500/year so far and I'm still using it. When I do move to something else, the current body will have residual value, most likely as my second body, but perhaps as a sale. It is not at all difficult to spend far more than $500/year on film and processing and scanning. Actually, if you shoot and print much, it is quite hard not to...
In contrast.....the MF film bodies and my V700 are all worth more now than I paid for them.
Regarding the bodies, something tells me that you did not buy them new. ;-) I'm a bit surprised to hear that the value of a scanner has gone up...
Two "by-the-ways." I own that scanner. I shot, developed, and printed BW film for many, many years and then shot color transparency film for almost as long.
Take care,
Dan
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