Saturday, August 31, 2019

Convinced


I was in a card shop on King Street in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia recently and they had a photographer as an artist in residence.  One of the images she had was of a collection of old cameras.  I recognized a few of them, I have used a couple of cameras like them over the years.  I grew up with film.  Simple cameras at first, some antiques and later top of the line professional film cameras.  My father had a simple dark-room set up in the corner of the garage (the garage was heated, had running water, and hardwood floors - that is a long story.) I added equipment to the darkroom and even did some color processing and printing (a real pain in a home set up.) 

About 20 years ago, I bought my first good digital camera.  The image above was one of the first that I captured with that first camera, I printed it on an ink-jet printer and I was sold.  I had figured that the digital would be a novelty, that I would continue to shoot film while digitals got better, I had a 2-3 year old Nikon 35mm SLR at the time (I still have it.) I never went back to shooting film. The quality on the digital, the ease, the very low cost of shooting left little reason to go back.  

I have a few thousand negatives, mostly black and white, I started tossing color negatives a few years ago (regretfully.) I have a digital film scanner that will convert those to digital.  I still own a few working film cameras.  But, I can't remember the last time I used one.  

When was the last time you shot film? 

11 comments:

  1. at least 15 years ago, I think.

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  2. Oh man, I can't even remember. At least 15-20 years ago.

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    Replies
    1. And phones take better pictures than a lot of early digital cameras did.

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  3. Replies
    1. I was still buying film cameras in the mid 90’s.

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  4. Let me put it this way, I miss my Vivitar 110! I don't take pictures any more. That actually was the only camera I was good with.

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    1. The pocket size was fun, the negatives were tiny, I scanned a roll of them from my mother’s box of mysteries, they are a challenge to work with.

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  5. Anonymous8/31/2019

    That's a pretty good photo for a twenty year old digital camera.

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  6. Bought my first digital in 2000. So print until then. SO MANY PRINTS!

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  7. so long ago I can not remember.

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