Have you tried returning to film photography?

I got started in photography in 1989, my high school class in black and white photography. From there I took film photography up until 2002 where I slowly switched over to digital, starting with a point and shoot, then a digital SLR in 2005. From there it's been entirely digital.

Just recently I've been searching medium format cameras as a bit of taking back to a slower method. I enjoy the older cameras, especially the manual focus SLR's and how they were built like tanks. Just how mechanical some of the older gear is, and how you're capturing images with something so simple.

I've been meaning to scan my old negatives so I'll purchase a flatbed scanner and just have a film processing lab developing. But after thinking about this, I seriously wonder does anyone go back to film even part time or just for fun?

I greatly enjoy digital, but I feel like shooting film is harder since you are flying by instruments instead of visual.

Just thinking!

I still dabble with analogue. It's undoubtedly a different experience and I still love the quality of film but it's just so inconvenient and time/money consuming that I can see me flogging off most of my analogue gear unless I can acquire a house with enough extra space to build another darkroom in.

I still prefer film far over digital. The main utility of digital for me is to take pictures of my toddler, which demands a lot of snapshooting flexibility. But my main portrait camera is a Hasselblad, my main landscape camera is a Noblex panoramic medium format camera, and my main love-of-photography cameras are large format view cameras (4x5 and 8x10).

Although my first camera dates back to a Kodak Instamatic in the 70s, my obsessive venture into photography started with a Canon DSLR. Now, however, I just use a 50-year-old rangefinder and Tri-X. Putting aside any issues of quality or convenience, I simply love the process of using a film camera. I plan one day to mess around with a twin lens reflex (TLR).

I find myself shooting film more than digital. Just need to get around to uploading it.

http://www.flickr.com …0/sets/72157618​504509270/

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Most of what I shoot now is film. Velvia, kodachrome, b+w TMX100, Ektar 100. Except for wildlife or conditions that are not suitable for slow film speeds as 50 or 100.

Shoot analog all the time. Canon EOS 1V, Speedgraphic 4x5, Cambo 8x10, and a Hasselblad 500 c/m

I find it funny when people refer to film as "analog." Just call it film, for heaven's sake...

I've dabbled with it every now and again, from shooting 35mm to playing around with medium format. I have to push myself to do it: digital just seems so easy - too easy - in comparison. But I can't see myself giving it up totally, either. There's just something about it that's hard to explain...

IMO film is also digital; photons are quantum particles, after all, and at its essence the world is digital. It is our perception that causes it to be seen as analog.

I never shot film, but I learned it after learning computer processing. For me, the advantage is being able to do the post processing. I don't have the space, or time, or money to process my own film.

I really miss shooting film. The whole process of loading the camera, dialing in the settings from the lightmeter to loading the film in the developing canister. Then there is printing/enlarging, which is an artform unto itself.

robscomputer wrote in post #9488334
I got started in photography in 1989, my high school class in black and white photography. From there I took film photography up until 2002 where I slowly switched over to digital, starting with a point and shoot, then a digital SLR in 2005. From there it's been entirely digital.

Just recently I've been searching medium format cameras as a bit of taking back to a slower method. I enjoy the older cameras, especially the manual focus SLR's and how they were built like tanks. Just how mechanical some of the older gear is, and how you're capturing images with something so simple.

I've been meaning to scan my old negatives so I'll purchase a flatbed scanner and just have a film processing lab developing. But after thinking about this, I seriously wonder does anyone go back to film even part time or just for fun?

I greatly enjoy digital, but I feel like shooting film is harder since you are flying by instruments instead of visual.

Just thinking!

Film is only harder than digital if you don't understand your film equipment... much like many new photo enthusiasts don't understand their digital equipment.

If you take the time to set your exposure properly with film, your results should consistently be better than shooting digital for no other reason than film possessing a larger dynamic range than digital sensors currently do.

Things that make film "harder" ==> Perceived cost. Buy film, develop film, pay for prints, pay for enlargements... repeat, repeat, repeat... If you develop your own and print your own, you add another level of re-occurring expense to your process. While developing and printing your own film can be very enjoyable, chemical waste management and disposal will slowly become an issue adding additional costs to the process.

I still have a number of film bodies. All except one is ready to use at any given moment. I also still have undeveloped rolls of film for which developing has no immediate priority, the age of which I couldn't even begin to tell you.

Film is easier in some ways. The shutters for all my different film camera lenses have fewer variables and fewer intermediate steps -- under daylight conditions, I know that 1/125 at f/11 will properly expose ISO 100 slide film. I've done it enough. So if I want a shallower DOF I know I can do an equivalent EV like 1/500 at f/5.6 (fine for shallow DOF on medium format). And I know that I need to open up a stop for ISO 50 film, and I recognize when lighting conditions are 1 or 2 stops darker than sunlight (or brighter, like for very bright beach or snow scenes).

So often times I don't even use a light meter.

I shot film from 1975 until 2004 but started shooting with a DSLR in 1999..

The only film I miss is shooting 4x5.. There is just something special about large format..

35mm,,nah.. I'll never go back..

If I had a darkroom I would shoot more film. I just bought a bunch of film last week and have been shooting through those rolls. I do like the difference in images that film can produce vs. digital but for me it's more about using my old cameras than the film.

I only shoot digital at the moment, but am certainly interested into film since it still has a certain character which digital somehow doesn't seem to have.
So, maybe in the future a nice old Hasselblad camera? Takes a while to save up to as a student, but with a beauty like that it just has to work out.