Olympus-OM
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [OM] Film vs digital (OM Lot)

Subject: Re: [OM] Film vs digital (OM Lot)
From: Joel Wilcox <jfwilcox@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 11:50:22 -0500
On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 11:03 PM, DrT (George Themelis)<drt-3d@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Usually people on craigslist price old film cameras as though digital
>> never happened...
>
> Did digital really happen?  Someone, please, wake me up! :)
>
> I wonder if there are people in this list *actively* shooting film with
> their Olympus OM cameras. If so, why?
>
> Even though I use digital exclusively for "work" (web/ebay), for personal
> photography I use slide film in my stereo cameras.
>
> Nothing in digital compares to the quality and realism of looking at a pair
> of sharp stereo slides in a good 3-D viewer.  Progress is being made, but I
> have not seen anything to convince me to switch to digital stereo
> photography.... So, I keep shooting/mounting stereo slides, despite the cost
> and time required.

I guess I'll take the bait, though anything with "vs" in the subject
seems likely just to stir the pot.

Digital has been happening for me since 1995, when I bought my first
film scanner.  I shot slides nearly exclusively until 2004, then my
experiment with digital source photography began.  I kept thinking I
was going to continue shooting film a lot, but the batteries mostly
died in the bodies as they sat on the shelf.

I'm shooting my remaining Kodachrome at the moment in an OM-4 and
enjoying it a lot.  While I am enjoying it, it does not displace my
DSLR.  Like most things analog, film photography is being displaced,
if not replaced, at a time when it is in full leaf and flower.  It has
never been better, really.  It is extremely good and it is a known
quantity.  If you like the look of film, whether you process it via a
traditional or digital darkroom, you really have no reason to believe
that you will somehow come to dislike how it looks.  Good is good.

If I were doing a lot of color darkroom or enjoyed firing up the slide
projector, I would certainly favor shooting film more than I do
currently.  But I like the E-system a lot.  The lenses are excellent,
the cameras are exciting to use, and the results speak for themselves.
 For a manual focus-only system, OM is excellent as far as it goes.
My experience with it has greatly enriched my ability to get the most
out of the E-system.  The reverse is true as well.  I can't really
choose between them any more than I could choose between one of my
parents.

And I don't see why I need to.  I like them both and both serve my
needs, though I expect to put many more exposures through my DSLRs
than my OMs.  I certainly don't need to dislike digital capture in
order to like OM.  Digital photography has helped me further my skills
in photography in general, and that serves my film photography as
well.

Furthermore, downstream in the process digital has returned much
better results than I was ever able to get in the darkroom,
particularly in color photography, and I have more or less been able
to match my darkroom BW prints closely and even improved tonalities
slightly, though I haven't found a near-archival inkjet paper I like
for BW printing.  I would definitely agree that the conventional
darkroom rules in BW photography.  But with color, for me, no way.

Life is good.  People get restless with one thing or another, and I'm
no exception, but life is still good, particularly when there are
options.

Joel W.
-- 
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Sponsored by Tako
Impressum | Datenschutz