Film Still Popular Among Pros

[Dave Jeffery]

I was drawn into large format photography because my sister bought a 44" printer and I quickly discovered the limitations of 35mm capture for producing large prints. Perhaps the digital printing revolution will draw others in as well?

[Ben R]

I'm sure he would Rory if you shot your 8X10" at 3fps...

Seriously though, each format has its place and comparing a 35mm format whether film or digital to 3 steps up is just rediculous. People seem to argue film vs digital as a medium forgetting that each has to be compared within its own format size! That anyone can say that digital is better comparing his 12MP output (that IMO outresolves most 35mm film in general use) to a 645 even never mind an 8X10" is just silly.

[Dave Jeffery]

I was drawn into large format photography because my sister bought a 44" printer and I quickly discovered the limitations of 35mm capture for producing large prints. Perhaps the digital printing revolution will draw others in as well?

To add to that Canon and HP have just jumped into the large printer competition in a big way and if large printers become a lot cheaper as a result and proliferate, and a sweet, small, flatbed scanner for only 35mm, medium format and 4x5 is made with a glass bathtub for wet scanning, and digital sensors cannot increase capacity cheaply, there may be a lot more interest in medium format and 4x5 film use? Create a new 6 shot Graflock holder loaded by Fuji in a cleanroom which is recyclable?

Hey, I'm dreaming and I'm not even in bed yet.

[Gary L. Quay]

I'm at a loss as to why you've been trying for three years to match your prints with your monitor and haven't been successful. Millions of people have successfully calibrated their monitors. What calibration system and monitor are you using?

Monoco EZ color and a Huey monitor calibrator. It's an eMac with a CRT monitor.

Also, I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to photography. A representation of what I see through the lens is what I'm looking for, perhaps that's why the darkroom fits me so well at this point.

--Gary

[Brian C. Miller]

Usher, a freelancer who covers the White House for both Newsweek and Time magazines and is coming out with a book illustrating hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, isn't surprised his colleagues expressed a lingering loyalty to some of the old methods.

Chris Usher and his view camera, from a mini-documentary. He was also using something that looked like a Polaroid conversion.

[Jay DeFehr]

A five year old thread -- it might be interesting to see a current poll of the same question. Then again, it might be depressing.

[Fred L]

I believe he used a Razzle in New Orleans.

[cosmicexplosion]

"I shoot just as much digital as the next guy out of necessity," Usher said. "I use film probably a third of the time, on personal projects 100 percent of the time. There's a richness and a depth of field that becomes more prevalent when you're shooting film as opposed to digital."

Depth of field is more prevalent when you're shooting film? I've heard a lot of very valid reasons for using film but that isn't one of them. I hope this guy was misquoted.

i think he might be talking about , when you shoot digital, the camera has a hard time deciding where to focus the sky or the forground sky fore sky skitso shit

or maybe thats just in auto focus, or a prob long solved, also he means the cut and paste quality of the images as they dont blend as well as film,

i have seen some grand black and white prints shot and printed with digital,
mind you they were small.

but i dont think we should encourage too many people to use film, or we will lose our edge!

[Brian C. Miller]

According to Chris Usher's web site, he's currently working with wet plate. And from some of his pictures, he's using a lens with swirlies.

[Fr. Mark]

Is the argument that digital and film are different approaches valid? Oil paints did not completely kill egg tempera not did acrylic kill goauche. I thought I saw a statistic somewhere that the bottom of the film market was reach in 2009. The middle class in India (and maybe China too) is larger than the U.S. Entire population...