did you shoot film?

I have to say, Dustin, those are some stunning photos. What did you do to scan them to digital? Fuji always reproduced greens beautifully.

I still have about 20 4x5 stainless steel film hangars, five 4x5 dip tanks, and twenty 4x5 Riteway film holders I need to get around to putting on eBay.

HBOC wrote in post #15466001
I sold my 1Ds and bought an F5 and shot with that from June 2012 until October as my only camera. I did this as a personal project - to make sure my gear didn't "hold" me back. Here are a few shots. Taken with F5 + Tokina 17mm 3.5 RMC + Reala 100 film.

Those are great from a 35mm. You need to reveal the secret in how did you scan it? Or who did the scanning? I haven't jumped to 35mm film precisely I fear that I can't get that type of scanning quality at home. Medium format is easier to achieve.

Not only did I shoot film, I shot daguerreotypes!

Thanks guys! Blue Moon Camera here in Portland did the developing and scanning for me. They use a Kodak and a Nikon 9000 ED scanner. These are scanned with one or the other. Check them out online - they do mail orders and are superb!

Well, a new Rolleiflex:

http://www.petapixel.c​om …-n-to-debut-at-photokina/

Hehehehe.....who would drop $5k for one when you can get the earlier models for a lot less??? The design is outdated. The lens isn't interchangeable. In so many ways, it is behind the time. You must be a diehard Rollei fan to get one.

I guess I started with film. When I was about 7 years old, I found one of my dad's old point and shoot film cameras laying around the house. I was intrigued by it and asked my parents to get film for it. Next time we took a trip somewhere interesting, I took some pictures. I don't think they were really very good though. I kept going with that for several years, and I did get better. I remember taking that camera with me on a class trip to Washington DC. I brought 4 rolls of 36 exposure film with me, 1 for each day. Now I can't imagine limiting myself like that since digital photography is essentially unlimited. I remember I brought some film in to be developed one time at Walmart and they ended up losing it. That prompted me to switch to digital. That year for Christmas, I got a digital camera, but it was very cheaply made, and I'm not sure it even had 1 megapixel. I got a few more point and shoots in the mean time and found a Canon Poweshot SX120 IS a few years ago. This one really got me interested in the technical details since it had manual operation on it. I used that up until a few weeks ago when I finally got a DSLR in my Rebel T3i.

RDKirk wrote in post #15457649
I was teaching color film processing and printing by 1972. I'm not missing film, though (color printing, especially, was expensive and exhausting). Spending a whole afternoon for one or two good 11x14 prints was "fun" back in the day, but I shudder at the prospect of taking that back up again.

I'm constantly amazed by how easy it is to produce color prints today. I darn nearly break out laughing every time a color print rolls out of my Epson.

OK, I was only born in '72, but I can relate to the last sentence, made me laugh. Thinking about it I must have had 100's of shots pre-digital that were probably worth printing, but I missed the opportunity in looking at the contact prints and choosing what I thought were the better ones at the time. Now some folks complain about spending 1/2 hour on a shot to process it. I sometimes spend that long on a not so good shot to see if I can get something out of it in case I go back in a month and get an idea about how I might process it differently.

I got interested in photography through both my father and grandfather. Father showed me what to do from a very early stage. Probably as soon as I could safely hold his prized camera in the late sixties. My grandfather intrigued me how he could take a picture and after emerging from a small dark cupboard (in his bedroom) he had a print in his hand of the picture we had taken. I was amazed and from about 6 or 7 I was hooked. When I started working in 1982 I saved up for and bought a Canon A1 and a selection of lenses and stuff and over the next 20 years used that camera well. Still have it as there's very little value on ebay. Processing both B&W, and colour film and slides I think I've done the lot. From what I remember it was very expensive, time consuming and a bit of a black art. Here we are many years later spending as much on cameras. Photoshop costs as much as a decent enlarger back in the day but we now have the luxury of sitting in the daylight, with a coffee, no foul smells or chemicals to spill and our loved ones still get peace and quiet as we process our images. Isn't it cute how despite moving to digital we still say we are going to process or develop our images. Photography has and continues to be a great hobby for me.

Started with a Minolta SRT-102 back in the mid 70's. Didn't get my first DSLR until December of 2010, although I had several P&S digitals. DSLR was too rich for my blood for a long time.

My dad always had a 35mm camera of which the name escapes me at this point. When we were young it was definitely a hands-off item for the children but once I got to be a teenager I got to play with it a little. All we ever shot was Kodachrome and I loved that film.

Once out on my own I had the normal gamut of 110 and 126 point and shoots and then bought my first 35mm which was a Zenit. I definitely had the bug and soon moved up to top of the line Canon F-1 series and also used a Pentax K series that I bought at a yard sales for a terribly cheap price but it was a great camera.

After meeting who would become my wife, she also enjoyed but not to the degree that I did. She saw my desire to do this part time but I always said that I would never do it with 35mm at that stage as virtually all professionals were using medium format and the difference in quality was too noticeable. She bought me a Pentax 6x7 for my birthday. I did a few weddings for friends and family and then got offered a part time job at one of the studios in town as I was a permanent fixture hanging out in the retail camera store that they had right beside the studio. The rest is pretty much history. I was lucky to have this part time job as he sold me his older studio cameras as he bought a new one about every 18 months. I came away with some Mamiya RB67 ProS's, more studio lighting than I really needed, some Pentax and Bronica 645 format and most of all I gained the knowledge on running a studio. I still have all my medium format bodies and still use them each year for personal work. I still love film.

Sometimes having just a quick P&S film camera did the trick, like when I grabbed this "moment" with my grandson, gosh, 20 years ago:

I shot Minolta X-700 film until the early 00's

It's very interesting to see how few of the regular names I see on these boards and correlate them to the attitudes and beliefs normally put forth by the " Johhny come Latleys" that have never shot film.

So much of the spray and prey attitude reigns these days and the belief of fixing/retouching/ makeing it suitable for public viewing.
I'd so love to give so many people a 500Cm Blad loaded with a roll of tranny film and have them shoot something that only had the near nothing processing that was done even just 15 years ago.
So many would just not be able to cope these days.

It's also amazing to see a couple of the examples posted here. They stand out so much and really make the difference for those that know I suppose, the difference in the look of film and digital..

I still have all my darkroom gear including a Durst Colour processor I converted From EP-2 to RA-4.
Wired in some dimmer switches and with adjustment could slow the thing down again so I could process b/w in the thing as well.

I took my enlarger off the baseboard and made a really solid bracket and mounted it on the wall. Max magnification was when the thing hit the ceiling. For the occasional small Images I did I had a wooden box I put the easels on to get the paper close enough.
Doing large prints the images was too feint and exposure too too long so I found a 24V projector globe that I think was 250W and replaced the original 100W globe with that. I had a bunch of down light transformers in series and parallel powering the thing. You had to be quick with focus and setup as after about 90 sec the lamp head got so hot it started to smell. Was one way of making sure you worked quickly though.

I used to buy all my film in bulk loads and roll my own. I'd get canisters from the lab that processed my film. Kodak went to crimping the ends which destroyed the canister when you opened it but Fuji and offshoot brands had the ones you could just bang the ends off and re use loads of times.
Sometimes I'd sit at the dining room table at night and watch tv as I loaded 3 or 4 30M rolls of film into canisters. Usually a couple of B/W and a couple of colour. Tranny never seemed that much cheaper to bulk load for some reason.

In the later years of film it became cheap and I did a deal with a local lab on buying it by the box. I went there one day to pick some up and the guy was out. I told his new staff member I wanted to pick up the box of film I had ordered in and she asked what it was them proceeded to get one single roll off the shelf. I looked at her, she looked at me Till I asked what that was for? She said that was the film I asked for. Just then the guy appeared with the box of 100 rolls I wanted and put it on the counter. I pointed out to the girl that was a box of film, what she gave me was a roll. I always remember that because the look on her face had the lab guy and I cracking up for minutes.

There was a reason I had $1000 a month processing bills at the lab and I sure don't miss them!I
I still have a few Nilkon Fe-2's including one I saved that has had about 10 rolls of film through it and is in absoloutley Mint condition. Wonder if it is worth anything yet or ever will be?
Sold all my Medium format gear but Kept the Mamiya Twin lens being my first Roll Film camera and one that never let me down even when everything else in teh bag had died.

A mate from texas sent me over a Mamiya 645 set a few years back. I think it has nearly ALL the lenses and accesories they offered. My son's art teacher nearly chit a Kidney when he turned up at school with that for the Photography course they did. The rest of the kids thought it must have been 100 years old.
My son was also the only one that knew his way round a darkroom. He used to come in with me for hours when he was a kid and was always fascinated at the " Magic Paper " that went in white and a picture appeared before his eyes.

Enough of this reminiscing, I'll be going out and spending money on film and chemicals tomorrow if I'm not careful.

Mind you, If I had to go back to doing all my work on film and paper, I wouldn't be able to get out of photography fast enough.

glumpy wrote in post #15482336
It's very interesting to see how few of the regular names I see on these boards and correlate them to the attitudes and beliefs normally put forth by the " Johhny come Latleys" that have never shot film.

So much of the spray and prey attitude reigns these days and the belief of fixing/retouching/ makeing it suitable for public viewing.
I'd so love to give so many people a 500Cm Blad loaded with a roll of tranny film and have them shoot something that only had the near nothing processing that was done even just 15 years ago.
So many would just not be able to cope these days....

...Enough of this reminicing, I'll be going out and spending money on film and chemicals tomorrow if I'm not careful.

Mind you, If I had to go back to doing all my work on film and paper, I wouldn't be able to get out of photography fast enough.

I share many of your sentiments. How many new photogs here have ever used a public library card catalog before? How many have had to go to a library to do their research projects for school? Photocopy newspaper articles from microfilm? Technology has changed the way we do mostly everything. Did the old way build character and help develop the virtue of patience more than today's modern and digital conveniences? I like to think so, but Neanderthals probably said the same thing about Cro-Magnons when they went from spears to crossbows.

We're different generations that grew up with different technologies. My grandfather couldn't program a VCR. My 5-yr old daughter doesn't know what a VCR is and knows how to use my iPhone better than I do.