Digital Explosion
For the last 5 years or so, I have concentrated a lot of my photography efforts on shooting film, mainly 35mm. My favorite part of shooting 35mm film is the whole slew of options for cameras and lenses. From rare and elusive rangefinders, to my coveted Nikon's and Minolta's. When I first ventured into photography 5 years ago, using film wasn't a big deal. I could shoot a role, take it Walgreen's, and a hour later I had my negatives and a CD. It was great. I loved it.
Fast forward a few years and everything has changed. One day I took my rolls up the Walgreen's counter and was informed that film processing is no longer in store, and I would have to wait about a week. Living in a northern Midwest state, in a town of about 20,000, I soon found myself with few options. I found a store at my local mall that developed a roll for me for $1.50! I blew a sigh of relief as I had found an affordable, local film lab. I went there a few weeks later to drop more film off to find the store was closing, just my luck. Now things are becoming desperate, and I drop some film off at a Midwest drug/retail store. They allow me to just develop the roll (so I can scan it myself with my excellent Pacific Imaging 7200 35mm scanner), for $1.47 with tax! Perfect! Turn around time was about 4 days but the roll always came back properly developed and unscratched, a prominent problem with many labs.
Unfortunately those were all during my college days, which are over now. I'm now back in my hometown and with only 1 option for film developing: Wal-Mart. To be fair, Wal-Mart doesn't do too bad of a job and the turnaround time is only a few days. However, you must purchase a CD so each roll costs around $10 to develop. Along with that, they throw away the negatives leaving you with the puny jpeg's on the CD. These files are so small and compressed that they really are only good for online posting. And forget editing. The pictures from my previous post with my Nikon F2 were from a few rolls developed from Wal-Mart.
Now, a lot of people send their film to an online store to have them developed. I have used www.thedarkroom.com a few times and have always been happy with their service, but it is still a minimum of $11 to develop your images. This means that to buy a roll of film and then develop it will cost around $15-$20 per roll! That's without getting into slide film, which is even more expensive. So the price for using all of these great 35mm film cameras is pretty much that: $15 minimum for 36 photos. I know that shooting film is expensive, but that is highway robbery. I could develop my own photos which is what I do for black and white film, but that is a relatively easy process with cheap chemicals and the c41 process is a little more complicated and definitely more expensive.
There have been a few digital cameras in my line up in the last few years, almost all of which are hideously outdated. Not obsolete, but certainly outdated. My first was Canon 20D, which was a pretty nice camera. I grew out of it quickly though and went back to film. Then I read about all of the hype with micro 4/3 cameras and decided to give one of those a go. I found an Olympus E-P2 with the 14-42mm kit lens and used that off and on for the last year or so. The 14-42mm kit lens was disappointing, however with my Minolta MD lenses adapted to the camera, it was mildly impressive. In the end though, I found the menu system not very intuitive and too many of the features were buried into the maze of menu's which equated for not a very user friendly experience for me.
Then I went completely crazy. I read many articles where people were talking about mega pixels being over rated (which they can be) and how low mega pixel cameras produce more than fine images. The Nikon D1X was my first venture, and I love that camera. Yes, it is very outdated but it creates excellent images that make beautiful prints. I liked it so much I purchased a Nikon D2H, a second generation of Nikon's pro cameras. While the image quality was similar (5.3mp in the D1X vs 4.1 in the D2H), the D2H is an awesomely fast camera with 8 fps and a much improved menu system than the D1X. The D1X actually operates similarly to a film camera, as the camera only supports small CF cards and the LCD screen is completely useless for reviewing shots. Watch for a video upload on both of these cameras.
With the realization that color film shooting is becoming more and more expensive, my transition to a digital system (or systems) is under way. Up next: Fujifilm X-E1. Recently acquired and still amazed that usable images can be obtained from 6400 ISO!
Fast forward a few years and everything has changed. One day I took my rolls up the Walgreen's counter and was informed that film processing is no longer in store, and I would have to wait about a week. Living in a northern Midwest state, in a town of about 20,000, I soon found myself with few options. I found a store at my local mall that developed a roll for me for $1.50! I blew a sigh of relief as I had found an affordable, local film lab. I went there a few weeks later to drop more film off to find the store was closing, just my luck. Now things are becoming desperate, and I drop some film off at a Midwest drug/retail store. They allow me to just develop the roll (so I can scan it myself with my excellent Pacific Imaging 7200 35mm scanner), for $1.47 with tax! Perfect! Turn around time was about 4 days but the roll always came back properly developed and unscratched, a prominent problem with many labs.
Unfortunately those were all during my college days, which are over now. I'm now back in my hometown and with only 1 option for film developing: Wal-Mart. To be fair, Wal-Mart doesn't do too bad of a job and the turnaround time is only a few days. However, you must purchase a CD so each roll costs around $10 to develop. Along with that, they throw away the negatives leaving you with the puny jpeg's on the CD. These files are so small and compressed that they really are only good for online posting. And forget editing. The pictures from my previous post with my Nikon F2 were from a few rolls developed from Wal-Mart.
Now, a lot of people send their film to an online store to have them developed. I have used www.thedarkroom.com a few times and have always been happy with their service, but it is still a minimum of $11 to develop your images. This means that to buy a roll of film and then develop it will cost around $15-$20 per roll! That's without getting into slide film, which is even more expensive. So the price for using all of these great 35mm film cameras is pretty much that: $15 minimum for 36 photos. I know that shooting film is expensive, but that is highway robbery. I could develop my own photos which is what I do for black and white film, but that is a relatively easy process with cheap chemicals and the c41 process is a little more complicated and definitely more expensive.
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| Shaggy Mane (?) - Taken with Nikon F100 w/ 70-210 f/4 AF, Portra 400 |
There have been a few digital cameras in my line up in the last few years, almost all of which are hideously outdated. Not obsolete, but certainly outdated. My first was Canon 20D, which was a pretty nice camera. I grew out of it quickly though and went back to film. Then I read about all of the hype with micro 4/3 cameras and decided to give one of those a go. I found an Olympus E-P2 with the 14-42mm kit lens and used that off and on for the last year or so. The 14-42mm kit lens was disappointing, however with my Minolta MD lenses adapted to the camera, it was mildly impressive. In the end though, I found the menu system not very intuitive and too many of the features were buried into the maze of menu's which equated for not a very user friendly experience for me.
Then I went completely crazy. I read many articles where people were talking about mega pixels being over rated (which they can be) and how low mega pixel cameras produce more than fine images. The Nikon D1X was my first venture, and I love that camera. Yes, it is very outdated but it creates excellent images that make beautiful prints. I liked it so much I purchased a Nikon D2H, a second generation of Nikon's pro cameras. While the image quality was similar (5.3mp in the D1X vs 4.1 in the D2H), the D2H is an awesomely fast camera with 8 fps and a much improved menu system than the D1X. The D1X actually operates similarly to a film camera, as the camera only supports small CF cards and the LCD screen is completely useless for reviewing shots. Watch for a video upload on both of these cameras.
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| Nikon F2 w/ Nikkor 300mm f/4.5 ED IF - Taken with Nikon D2H w/ Nikkor 70-210 f/4 AF |
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| Pheasant Hunting - Taken with Nikon D1X w/ Nikkor 70-210 f/4 AF |
With the realization that color film shooting is becoming more and more expensive, my transition to a digital system (or systems) is under way. Up next: Fujifilm X-E1. Recently acquired and still amazed that usable images can be obtained from 6400 ISO!
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