Got to love that film! Part I | Fuji Velvia 50 scans

I hope you’re all well!

I’ve been very busy lately. Time just rushes by…

I’ve always been interested in film. I started my photography work using film, and looking back I’ve still probably spent more time using it, than full digital (i.e. straight from a digital camera to a computer).

These days, I don’t shoot any slide film nor do I make many film prints; So it’s a hybrid process of film capture and digital scan.

My film gear is very simple. I have an old Nikon F5 with a Nikon f/1.8 AF-D lens. That’s it. It’s a big hunk of metal and probably wouldn’t be discrete enough for street photography but it produces beautiful results. All the shots below were made with this setup.

Here’s an excellent article by Ken Rockwell on shooting film on the digital age. http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/how-to-shoot-film.htm

I’ll continue my thoughts on film types and process in future posts.

All the best …

 

Mayflower Beach – Dennis MA.

 

 

 

Old Main St. – Yarmouth MA

 

 

 

The Gorey House Front Door – Yarmouthport MA.

 

 

 

Saints Beach – Brewster MA.

 

 

 

Chatham MA.

Artist or Technician? Are you creating art, or just buying the tools? | Ken Rockwell | kenrockwell.com

Ryan and Katie’s stash, January 2013. (Photo: iPhone 5.) This free website’s biggest source of support is when you use any of these links when you get anything, regardless of the country in which you live. Thank you! Ken.

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Artists are all about what we create. We couldn’t care less what tools we or someone else used to create something; we’re concerned with the art itself.

We don’t care about the process; the final art is all that matters.

Sure, if we see something really cool we might ask another artist how he got that effect, but we don’t spend much of our time blabbing about tools or techniques when we could be making more art, or exchanging ideas instead.

Poke fun of our tools, and who cares? We take it as a compliment — and it marks you as an idiot. As artists, we force whatever tools we have at our disposal to create what we demand: to take what’s in our mind’s eye and fix it in tangible form.

To an artist, his work is him. His work is his vision realized. He is his work. His art is his own soul. His art is important, while the tools are irrelevant.

Artists are consummate technicians, possessing virtuosic ability to make our tools do exactly what we need then to do — but the tools are just an enabler; never the end result.

If you poke fun of my camera, I take it as a compliment because it means I’m able to work around bigger roadblocks than the next sap to get the results I want. When my kids ask me to fetch a piece of paper, scissors and a red crayon, they certainly would give me a funny look if I said they had a good or a crappy crayon. Who cares when what’s important is making a red heart for Mama from scratch? The end result matters, the methods don’t.

Technicians, on the other hand, are all about their tools. Poke fun of a technician’s tools or how he uses them, and he’ll take it personally. To a technician, he is his tools. His tools are a physical extension of his body, so say something good or bad about his camera, and he takes it personally.

Full Article: Artist or Technician? Are you creating art, or just buying the tools?.

Why We Love Film | Ken Rockwell | kenrockwell.com

Why We Love Film

by Ken Rockwell

Film versus Digital Capture

“Capture” means how an image or data is acquired.

After it’s caught, either on film or with digital capture, all of them are workable and archivable and printable in a computer, since all my film is scanned at the time of development.

If I capture on film, it all goes into the same digital workflow, archive and backup plan. The only difference is less work, less expense, better-looking files and more fun with film capture.

Film capture also gives me the option of a second, parallel workflow that both gives me a second set of permanent, eternally legible backups (the film itself), as well as the freedom to edit, print and project directly from the film if I so choose.

Dynamic Range?

You want dynamic range? I got your dynamic range right here in this little canister. It’s called film; a write-once, read-many (WORM) medium.

I made this shot on a Contax G2 with a 21mm Zeiss lens at f/8 on Fuji Velvia 50, which was processed and scanned at the same time at NCPS. The dynamic range is so great that the hellacious sunbursts you see are just what’s naturally coming off the diaphragm blade at f/8, as if 1,000 suns were shining in the lens in the two-minute exposure.

Not only that, but the film I shot in a Canon EOS Rebel G film camera, worth about $20 today, was sharper as scanned at NCPS than the file I made with the same lens on a Canon 5D, which is sharper still than anything on earth from Nikon digital.

How about that? A $20 camera with a $5 roll of film and $20 to process and scan the entire roll is sharper than a $5,000 camera. (The Contax cost more, but still loads less than anything in full-frame digital.)

Full Article: Why We Love Film.