Is it the Ends or the Means

Sir SR

Sir SR

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I'm currently sat here waiting for my developer to cool to around 20 degrees in the sink (house is very warm at the mo!!)

Loaded the film much easier in the dark bag this time.

So whilst waiting, I was just thinking about whether it's the process of taking the pic on my MF Bronica (manual exposure/focussing) and then developing it myself (the means) or whether the final image is the key (the ends)

Obviously when it all comes together it's just magic - one of the main reasons I'm enjoying film more than digital at the mo.

So do you think you enjoy the end image more because of the effort and process required to get the image?

Edit - do you still enjoy the process if you end up with dud pics?
 
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I always very much enjoy using my Bronica ETRs.I also enjoy the magic of developing film. I am not entirely sure that the resultant quality is that much more than my EOS 80D produces. But I don 't care.
 
Sir SR said:
I'm currently sat here waiting for my developer to cool to around 20 degrees in the sink (house is very warm at the mo!!)
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Your profile says Yorkshire and you're waiting for your dev to cool to 20 degrees??? Get that thermostat turned down and tell the family that film demands it! ;)

I think the answer may be that you have something you can physically hold and the ability to "read" a negative and visualise how it will print or scan is very satisfying. Don't get me wrong here, there will be disappointments and negs that just don't seem to print or scan as they should, but working with MF gives you a better start in viewing the detail anyway.
 
kendo1 said:
Both.
Yep.
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Basically,

bottom line,

This.

But...


It's rather more complex than that and I would need some time to attempt to express it.

I have in front of me a camera that represents many hundreds of pounds worth of 21st. century technology and a camera that represents £20 worth of 1970s technology.
They are about the same size.

When I leave home tomorrow which one will, without any thought, go in my pocket?

The 70s camera, of course.

Why?

Aah, that's the bit that will take time to explain.
 
I'll admit that I enjoy the process of using my view camera - there's a magic in seeing the image on the ground glass. After that, though, it's just drudgery for me. The only two parts I like are the camera use and the final print; and to be honest I only really use the camera to get to the final print.

So the means don't matter to me, only the final print; and the use of the camera is the only part of the means I like. (In my case, I can detect a difference between digital and LF negatives in the final print, which is the reason I use film, a view which is akin to heresy here :D).
 
Yes, it is a bit tropical in the house!! All good now. Really enjoyed developing the film. Loved looking through the ground glass. Waiting for the negs to dry at the mo but use the invert function on my phone to get a quick and dirty preview!

I took random shots of stuff around the house but I guess this was the first time I used this film so wanted to see what it was like!!

IMG_1484179695.948246.jpg
 
It's the variation with film cameras that make them more interesting. All the digitals seem to feel the same to use. So it's the whole process for me. There's a probably an analogy of film being like proper cooking and digital being the microwave dinner.
 
srichards said:
It's the variation with film cameras that make them more interesting. All the digitals seem to feel the same to use. So it's the whole process for me. There's a probably an analogy of film being like proper cooking and digital being the microwave dinner.
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For me it's mostly about the process. I simply don't enjoy using digital cameras and all that goes with them. I spent years in an almost photography-free wilderness when I owned a digital SLR. I barely touched it from one year to the next. I didn't realise that it wasn't photography per se that I was bored with, but the process of digital capture, post-production on the computer, and the way images tended to stay on the computer unseen and unloved. In a way it was film emulation that made me realise what was wrong. I'd literally spend hours trying to make a digital image appealing and ended up using a package of film emulation presents. A light came on in my head, I grabbed my Dad's old rangefinder, and that was that. Two and a half years down the line and I'm up to my neck in old Leica's, Rolleiflex and Hasselblads (which I am still amazed I can actually afford), have a darkroom at home, more film than food in the freezer, wet print in B&W and colour...and photography is a big and wonderful part of my life again.

The quote above resonates with me because I also enjoy cooking and I find the processes similar in some ways. Choosing which camera to use is like choosing which meal to cook: all satisfying but in with different flavours. I enjoy choosing which film to load in the same way I enjoy buying and choosing ingredients. Developing film is a lot like cooking, with ingredients being mixed and warmed and 'cooked' in the pots. Making and sharing real wet prints feels like sitting down to a well-cooked meal with friends. The antithesis of a digital file which sits on a hard drive, or the throw-away iPhone image shared on Facebook and forgotten in five minutes. I'll stop now before I stretch this analogy past it's breaking point.

I also agree that the cameras themselves make shooting film very appealing. Obviously, they are fantastic image-making machines, but they are also lovely in themselves, and a joy to own. There are so many different types that you can completely shake up your photography just by picking up a different camera. I.e. try using a 35mm rangefinder after using a Rolleiflex for a long time.

And I haven't even started on the joys of the darkroom! I could type for hours about that, but won't as it's time to do some work.

So in answer to the original questions: yes, I enjoy the final images much more because of the effort put into crafting them. And that also applies to the ones which didn't quite work out.
 
It’s definitely the means for me! I use both film and digital cameras and I think I definitely get better and more consistent results from digital, but I still prefer using film.

I think it’s the tactile experience and slow and deliberate methods which grab me. I find it hard to explain, but I really love setting the camera up, turning all the knurled knobs to focus and adjust movements, loading film and taking an exposure. Nothing beats looking at the scene on the ground glass either, it’s awesome.

Also I really love the reaction people give me when they see me stood behind a wooden field camera, with a dark cloth over my head, or turning dials and making notes in a note book. Surprising how often people stop and talk to you! :D

Sir SR said:
Some interesting points - the camera is lovely to use - more soul as Clarkson used to say on Top Gear!

The darkroom aspect sounds amazing - must try it one day!!

For the love of Coffee by Sir._.SR, on Flickr
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Nice! That's the sort of B&W I love, lots of contrast and impact (y)
 
Personally, it's both. Like @StephenM, I agree there is just something about using LF that gets me going. Though I do also enjoy the processing of B&W film and that moment the final image comes out. Likewise when film arrives back and you look at those little stained glass windows for the first time. Love it.
 
@Sir SR the spoon in the coffee beans is a lush shot!

for me it's definitely both - I have whittled down my collection to only cameras I enjoy using, and a Fuji X-E1 which I am awaiting a lens for, to decide if it's staying or not.
 
Woodsy said:
Personally, it's both. Like @StephenM, I agree there is just something about using LF that gets me going. Though I do also enjoy the processing of B&W film and that moment the final image comes out. Likewise when film arrives back and you look at those little stained glass windows for the first time. Love it.
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I got back into slide film last year and had never shot it in medium format before. I would have loved to have seen my own face when I took the first roll out of the tank. I remember standing in the kitchen with a slack-jaw :LOL:
 
A variation of the thread title:- Am I the only one that finds a digi camera NOT exciting..I played with my son's Canon 400d a few years ago and found it boring.
 
Never really enjoyed the D part of "home brewing" - at home anyway. Easier at school where we had a really good darkroom, while at home I had to load the spirals in a changing bag. The P part is truly magical though. Seeing a ghostly image appear from plain white paper sloshing in the tray under the safe light... To be fair to the modern equivalent, seeing an inkjet print emerge in the output tray (or, if your printer allows, watching the print head fly across and lay the image down) is fairly magical but not quite the same. A dye-sub adds the extra interest of the image appearing colour by colour.
 
excalibur2 said:
A variation of the thread title:- Am I the only one that finds a digi camera NOT exciting..I played with my son's Canon 400d a few years ago and found it boring.
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With digital I find its more about the ends.

I love the final image but don't enjoy the taking as much as I do when I shoot film. The clunk of the shutter, winding the film on, THAT view through the ground glass....it can't be relocated by that click of a digital SLR!
 
Carl Hall said:
It’s definitely the means for me! I use both film and digital cameras and I think I definitely get better and more consistent results from digital, but I still prefer using film.

I think it’s the tactile experience and slow and deliberate methods which grab me. I find it hard to explain, but I really love setting the camera up, turning all the knurled knobs to focus and adjust movements, loading film and taking an exposure. Nothing beats looking at the scene on the ground glass either, it’s awesome.

Also I really love the reaction people give me when they see me stood behind a wooden field camera, with a dark cloth over my head, or turning dials and making notes in a note book. Surprising how often people stop and talk to you!
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Definitely this ^^^
 
Just scanned in a few more pics! Will look at them later properly! Was worried about the band across the bottom of one of my negs but realised it was frosting on the mirror!!

D'oh!!

IMG_1484221005.186958.jpg
 
Woodsy said:
Personally, it's both. Like @StephenM, I agree there is just something about using LF that gets me going. Though I do also enjoy the processing of B&W film and that moment the final image comes out. Likewise when film arrives back and you look at those little stained glass windows for the first time. Love it.
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I also like the delayed gratification thing... though I don't take this to the extremes that @Woodsy does, of leaving film un-developed for a year or two! There is something to be said for leaving images for a while before seeing them, and batching up film to send off to Filmdev, or to wait for a dev session opportunity, provides that useful delay. OTOH the immediacy of digital and the added metadata could help the learning process too... but since I seem to have moved beyond the ability to learn (and only able to take pictures that look like nails ;) ) on balance the delayed gratification bit works better for me. I don't have an interchangeable lens digital camera; I keep planning to buy one and then deciding not to, since I'm not sure I'd really use it! Maybe if (when?) I go on a longish photogenic holiday, something like a Fuji X might be worth getting, just so I don't come back with 20 films of mistakes!
 
^^^ yes, this. It can take months for me to get around to processing a batch of film. Combine that with my terrible memory and it's always: SURPRISE! :D
 
srichards said:
It's the variation with film cameras that make them more interesting. All the digitals seem to feel the same to use. So it's the whole process for me. There's a probably an analogy of film being like proper cooking and digital being the microwave dinner.
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It's off topic to pick up on this, but it's also one of my (many) hobby horses - that different camera types, if not force, at least strongly suggest a way of working that might be inappropriate to both subject and photographer. Digital cameras are pretty much a monoculture - you either hold them up to your eye and use them as an extention to your vision, or you hold them at arm's length and explore the creative possibilities of sloping horizons and camera shake.

I have a real problem with eye level cameras, because (being lazy and taking the path of least resistance) I view the scene through the camera in the same way I look at it. With my eyes, I can't exclude extraneous material, and I'm aware of the "big picture" rather than the small part contained in the scene. That encourages both opposite errors of including too much and failing to include enough. In both cases because that's the way I see. I find that my framing is worse with an eye level camera, even though there is no objective reason why this should be the case. A waist level finder or a view camera screen isolated under a focusing cloth concentrates my mind in a way that a camera that I use as an extention to my eyes doesn't.
 
StephenM said:
It's off topic to pick up on this, but it's also one of my (many) hobby horses - that different camera types, if not force, at least strongly suggest a way of working that might be inappropriate to both subject and photographer. Digital cameras are pretty much a monoculture - you either hold them up to your eye and use them as an extention to your vision, or you hold them at arm's length and explore the creative possibilities of sloping horizons and camera shake.

I have a real problem with eye level cameras, because (being lazy and taking the path of least resistance) I view the scene through the camera in the same way I look at it. With my eyes, I can't exclude extraneous material, and I'm aware of the "big picture" rather than the small part contained in the scene. That encourages both opposite errors of including too much and failing to include enough. In both cases because that's the way I see. I find that my framing is worse with an eye level camera, even though there is no objective reason why this should be the case. A waist level finder or a view camera screen isolated under a focusing cloth concentrates my mind in a way that a camera that I use as an extention to my eyes doesn't.
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H'mm Stephen you could always frame the view with your fingers or make paper cut outs to see the shot before taking;) mind you, would have to have long fingers for lenses under 20mm
 
excalibur2 said:
H'mm Stephen you could always frame the view with your fingers or make paper cut outs to see the shot before taking;) mind you, would have to have long fingers for lenses under 20mm
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That would still leave me with the problem of accurately reframing with a camera. I have no idea if any film cameras have viewfinders like the Olympus E3 digital camera, but with that camera it's actually impossible to see all of the viewfinder without moving your eye around. I found that although the viewfinder seemed very like the OM1/2/4 cameras, it did have this problem that the OM cameras didn't - meaning that for accurate framing you really needed a tripod. Note that I wear contact lenses, not spectables, so eye distance from viewfinder was not responsible. All of which brings us back to needing a tripod just to ensure accurate framing. Which I'll admit isn't an issue for many.
 
StephenM said:
That would still leave me with the problem of accurately reframing with a camera. I have no idea if any film cameras have viewfinders like the Olympus E3 digital camera, but with that camera it's actually impossible to see all of the viewfinder without moving your eye around. I found that although the viewfinder seemed very like the OM1/2/4 cameras, it did have this problem that the OM cameras didn't - meaning that for accurate framing you really needed a tripod. Note that I wear contact lenses, not spectables, so eye distance from viewfinder was not responsible. All of which brings us back to needing a tripod just to ensure accurate framing. Which I'll admit isn't an issue for many.
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See your point about using a tripod (if you can)....but using all my 35mm SLR cameras I can't remember which ones have an accurate viewfinder as I've framed tight shots and it's not WYSIWYG when I see the jpg (maybe it's Asda scanning cutting the frame off?)...so now always allow space around the subject.
 
Both.

Working without the distraction of a screen helps me get into that 'flow state' easier. I'm not editing as I shoot and I'm always on edge, trying to work a scene as thoroughly as possible. The gap between taking a photo, seeing a neg/slide, and printing/scanning it also means that in a way I get to re-experience that one moment.

Then there's printing/scanning the film in, you can have the grittiness and contrast of pushed 35mm TX or the smooth subtlety of large format Portra 400. Just love the looks you can get out of film, and it's just far quicker for me to do that with an actual film workflow rather than faffing about with sliders on Photoshop.
 
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