I’m thinking of selling my current film based camera. But I am still unsure if it would be a good idea. I currently have a Canon 10D, and my film camera is a Canon Elan 7e. Technically speaking, they’re pretty much identical. At first, when I got my 10D, I thought I’d still shoot slide films, but after several months, I’ve shot only a few rolls. So, is there a good reason for me to keep my camera ? PSE + ready made digital pictures is much faster than scanning the negatives.
Did anyone had to face the same dilema, and if so, what was your conclusion? Did (or do you) regret your decision? Chuck, I think you’re still using your camera film, same for Grant… When will you move to all-time digital? Why?
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Ray – I still shoot the odd roll of film – mainly in a point and shoot but sometimes in my SLR – and I don’t plan to get rid of the film cameras – partly because they are old and I wouldn’t get anything much for them so the only cost is the room they take up in the cupboard; and partly because there are some occasions (weddings, etc) that I want to be able to increase the chance that the pictures last (see thread on disintegrating CD-Rs!) so I also record them on film.
Ray, my Canon film is packed away. haven’t used it since i went digital. However, if I take another trip to Denali NP in Alaska I will indeed bring my film camera. Backpacking in the mountains…no place to recharge batteries and no way i’m waying down my pack with a pile of batteries ! So, you may want to keep that in mind….if you ever go on a ‘walk about’ 🙂
And Chuck will loan me his zoom 😉 all I have is the 75-210….not good enough for bear pics…the ones where I’m standing real far away from them. Alaska grizzly bears are huge !
Even though I like my digital camera and the many things it does well.(Nikon 5700) When I take candids, wedding receptions, parties etc. I have to use my film camera. (Elan 2E) With the 35mm I can stay in focus, re-compose, an when I see the shot,take it, and it never misses. Unfortunately, with candids, when you see it in the digital, you just missed it. It’s just not fast enough. Plus, at least on my Nikon, once you press half way on shutter to lock in exposure, you can’t zoom in or out. Love ’em both,
I really do bad mouth my digital camera but I do use it. I use it for web work, email, and experimentation. For me on the monitor digital is to be king. I do not use it for anything I value, anything I want to hang on the wall, or anything I want to be critical with. Digital is an indispensable tool for the web but it is not in the same tool as my 35 mm and nor should it be considering the cost difference.
Why do I still adhere to film? Well apart from the obvious that film produced much superior results and a 35 mm SLR easier to control there is more to it than that. Every frame I shoot in film cost money and with that in mind I settle down and spend more time on each individual shot. Not only does this give me a higher percentage of acceptable images but also it gives me a higher number of good images. When I was in Arizona I shot over 3000 digital and just under 300 film frames and in the end I had far more presentable images with film. The fact is I do not seem to work well in blanket shooting but the discipline that film force upon me gives me much higher artistic return. With that being said I still use both, digital seems to be my snapshot camera and my 35 mm is my creative outlet.
When will I move to digital? Good question and the digital sirens do taunt me but … when oh when …. I will wait for 20 meg cameras with full frame chips at a cost that is comparable to a film based camera and smells like hypo.
But, Ray, I suspect this tells more about myself than anything else.
Ray, I’m a crummy photographer, but I’ve seen the work you’ve done. That’s a very nice camera, and I think you might wish you had it back somewhere down the road. It’s yours; it’s paid for; and unless you’ve already got somebody on the string who’ll give you big bucks for it, I think you should keep it! Digital is fine, but what happens if you later decide you want some "old fashioned pictures" again?! You’re a very good photographer, and someday you might find, like Grant, that digital isn’t quite up to the standards you’d like to set. Besides, what if your battery dies while you’re backpacking in Denali? 🙂
Ray, I haven’t shot any film lately, but I still have the Elan (original version) in my camera bag and plan to fire it up again in the future. I want to try some slide photography and scanning (very interested in the thread on dedicated film vs. flatbed!) and compare the results with the digital. As we’ve talked about, I’m still not wild about the results I’m getting from the 10D – probably 90% operator error, but I really want to explore the other side a little more…
Chuck, well maybe I’ll just take you with me…2 zooms are better than one 🙂 Beth, want to tag along ?? It will be fun…Oh geeze, Grant and Mart and Chris and Pete and Parri and Jane and heck…everyone should join in. ‘Grizzly photo challenge !’..they are just ‘little’ grizzly bears on the inland ( mostly vegetarian unless they get lucky enough to catch the occasional groundhog ). The big ones are by the shore :)…we can stay away from there.
I’m bad at the hiking part, but I’ll stay at base camp and cook! As a matter of fact, we’ll have base camp set up where there’s electricity, and I’ll spend the days recharging batteries for the digital cameras. 🙂 I LOVE Alaska. Have I said that before?
I’ve been thinking of photographing grizzlies….believe they have some in the Houston Zoo…. Will challenge my use of the Clone tool to get rid of them bars…
Hi Ray, Please don’t get rid of your film camera! There are times, as everybody has said here, that you will want it. Just put it in the corner of your kitchen, keep the batteries up and full of film. You will need it! Our family uses both. One thing about digital, is when you are trying to capture fast moving animals such as our pets and grandkids, you will need your film camera. Keep both, why not? I keep a film point-and-shoot on the kitchen table ready and loaded. One in my truck, a disposable, ready and loaded. In the zipper thing on my bicycle, I came across a den of foxes last spring as I sat on a bluff over the ocean, and they played around my feet, and I couldn’t move to fetch the camera out of my bicycle pouch,,,,,,oh well,,,, But you will be glad you have your film camera. Jane
I read all remarks and I believe it is all in the eye of the beholder. Most of you are used to dealing with film and I agree a good picture taken from a film still beats a digital image by far. They seem more crisp and sharp. However I believe that in a few years from now digital will surpass film and can match images taken by film.
Unlike most of you I am a digital camera man and probably always will be as I seem to lack the ability to pre empt light conditions. Digital allows me to look at an image immediately after I took it. I then react to what I did and change whatever I fancy to improve the quality of the next image. Next to that there is the convenience the whole digital process offers in comparison to the film process. I can do it all at home and don’t need to go to a shop downtown to firstly have films developed etc.
Raymond in my mind do hang on to your film camera but everything is pointing to having it stored away in a nice place whilst you’ll be using your digital more and more.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions / stories! Very enlightning. And more… very convincing!
My film camera is stored along with the numerous filters (warmizer, blue, stars, etc.) I had from my "film era". It does take space, which untill now I believed was misused. Every now and then I take it out, turn it on, see if it still works, then put it back. Someone offered what I consider to be a fair price for it, keeping in mind the fact that it’s a 2 years old camera.
But… I read several good points here.. :
– Since it’s an EOS, it could serve as a backup for the digital (same lense, accessories, etc.) – In distant places, it could be easier to carry a camera for which I could find batteries & film as opposed to charging the digital and finding CF cards
Also, someone posted (Grant I think) a comment about shooting film that forces him to take only good pictures (or something alike). It’s so true. Since I got digital, I’m not shooting as good as I used to. I’ve been spoiled by the fact that it doesn’t cost a cent to process the pictures. Looking back at pictures I took several years ago, I now realize I should be way more carefull when shooting. Back then I was doing much nicer pictures.
Thanks everyone, I believe I’ll keep the Elan 7e 🙂
Ray P.S. Jodi, to extend your longest lense, have you considered a doubler ? 1.4x or 2x would be fine, if you’re shooting in daylight. 2x removes two stops, so at night, it is a good alternative. I have a 2x, an inexpensive one I found on E-bay, and although the optics aren’t as sharp as the lense alone, it allows me to take very cool shots!
Grant, I think I had the same experience of careless shooting, but now I’m "back to normal" again. It takes some time, but didn’t we have the same experience when we came from the dark old ages when we still had to use a handheld meter and suddenly there was auto exposure? And autofocus? I suppose it took me about 20.000 times pressing the shutter, but now I carefully frame and expose again, just like in the days I hardly remember(about a year ago) when I had to do it all by myself with a MF camera without any "auto".
Robert,Chuck, Grant and others, about quality of digital. I regularly meet with fellow professional photographers, ranking to the top of our country and the UK. We all came seperately but almost unanimously to the conclusion that the quality of prints from a digital SLR is somewhere between 35mm and MF. Quite an achievement for such a young technology.
Ray, keep your film SLR. Once you sold it, you will spend the money andafterwards you will never know what you did with this money. You won’t have the money any more and you won’t have a quality film SLR, so you will end up with just only empty hands. 😉 Keep it as a back up; I still have over $ 20.000 film equipment gathering dust, but I will just only sell part of it.
Yeah, Grant…I was having trouble with MF too…I didn’t think you meant THAT!!! <grin> Well…as usual, I seem to be a voice in the wilderness. I was a BIG photography hobbyist back in the 70’s…yes, folks, I AM that old. I had two 35mm SLR cameras, one loaded with Kodachrome, the other with various B&W…usually Kodak Panatomic X (sp?)…high res monochrome film. I did bulk film loading of my cassettes, did my own film processing and printing. After a few years, I got REALLY tired of the whole thing and gave the cameras, enlarger, film tanks and trays, bulk film loader…EVERYTHING to my daughter who was just graduating from high school. She still has my Honeywell Pentax with a wonderful f1.2 lens and a 80-210 zoom. She doesn’t use it much…they now have a Nikon digital. Since then, I have not owned a camera until a few years ago when digital cameras appeared. I bought a Nikon CP 950, Photoshop Elements, and my interest in photography was reawakened! I would NEVER, NEVER go back to film cameras! I love everything about digital cameras and the ability to work with the images on a computer. Yes, I also have a film scanner, and I have scanned most of my old 35mm slide library. For the most part, I prefer the images I get from my digital cameras. But I am grateful that I can resurrect those old slides which remind me of my misspent youth. Back to film? Not a chance! Bert
Scanning in our old and precious slides! I have been pecking away at a huge collection of them, and indeed it is time consuming, but with the slide scanner I have, it is very easy. Just finding the TIME to find, sort, scan, label, name,,,,,,,,, But it sure will be rewarding when I get at least some of them done! What wonderful pictures these old slides actually produce, once we have them scanned and worked on with PSE. We do have the best of both worlds, film and digital, and the combination here. Jane
I too have thousands of slides and film to deal with. I just got interested in digital. current film shots getting scanned by 1 hr lab.
what would you recommend to purchase as a hi rez film scanner??
thanks
Charlie
wrote in message
Scanning in our old and precious slides! I have been pecking away at a
huge collection of them, and indeed it is time consuming, but with the slide scanner I have, it is very easy. Just finding the TIME to find, sort, scan, label, name,,,,,,,,,
But it sure will be rewarding when I get at least some of them done! What wonderful pictures these old slides actually produce, once we have
them scanned and worked on with PSE.
We do have the best of both worlds, film and digital, and the combination
Do you shoot mostly color positive (slide), color negative or black-and-white film? I read somewhere that negative film has better color than positive. Do you still project slides, or just scan them into you computer so you can PS them…or both? I used to do a lot of B&W work. I like the dramatic effect in monochrome images. Hey, you’re starting to get me interested in film photography again…although I would never do darkroom work. It might be fun to borrow my old Pentax back from my daughter and see what I could do with it. It’s match-needle, manual focus, but it has very fine optics. Bert
Bert, I love these old Pentax cameras. I started my career with a Pentax ES ll and a Spotmatic F and I never had a camera that appealed to me so much as these ones. Everything was in the right place and very understandable.
Negative film doesnot have better color than slide film; usually slide film is better. The only advantage of negative film is the extended exposure latitude. Slide film tends to be more critical, just like digital. Burnt out highlights are lost for ever.
Ray, I know I’ve got too much equipement. But it is so hard to say goodbye to stuff that has served me so well over the years. I sold about $ 2000 of it and I still don’t know if I did right.
Leen, that’s amazing! My first 35 mm was a Pentax ESII and the second was a Spotmatic F! Gave the ES II to my sister (who inherited my father’s ES I), but still have the Spotmatic around here somewhere….small world!
Mine was alwo a Spotmatic…don’t remember a postfix letter…F or whatever. Could it have been a Spotmatic II? I’ll ask my daughter.
Leen, You’re right, the Spotmatic is a very nice camera to use…simple and straightforward. Mine had a 50mm F1.2 (or was it 1.4) lens. I took it out of the case a few months ago when I was in New York visiting my daughter. The old leather case is pretty tattered, but the camera looks like new. Julia said she had some trouble with the focal plane shutter, and almost junked the camera because the repair cost more than it was worth…$150. But she liked the camera so much (maybe some sentimental reasons too) that she decided to go ahead and fix it. I played with it a little, and everything still seems to work. The one thing I noticed is how HEAVY it is! My Oly E-20 is no lightweight, but it must weigh about half as much. They must have used cast iron for the camera box back then. bert
Bert and Leen: Rummaging around here, I found the Purchaser’s Record for my Spotmatic F: bought 12/3/76. Believe I bought the ES II in late ’73 or early ’74. Also found the brochure on Takumar lenses: the ‘normal’ lens choices were the 55 mm F1.8 and the 50 mm F1.4; I had one of each. The screw threads drove me crazy when a quick shift was needed, but they didn’t fall off…
At times I suspect everyone in the world’s first good camera was a Pentax Spotmatic Over they years I owned two of them with various lenses eight in total. Wonderful camera that fit well in my hands.
The difference between the "F" and the other Spotmatics: the "F" had open lens metering, the other spotmatics used stop down metering. Chuck, the ES ll was my first camera too with the 1.4/50 mm, but it belonged to my employer. As I got used to its superior quality compared to the Praktica I owned, I sold the Praktica and bought myself a Spotmatic F. "Aha", my employer said and as soon as possible he sold the ES ll…
Nevertheless, he never missed an opportunity to demonstrate how superior his Hasselblad lenses were over my 35mm equipement. So I bought myself a Mamiya 645 with a few lenses and I could point out where my Mamiya produced superior images compared to his Hasselblad that was 4x the price…. He never talked about quality issues anymore. Just only about the status a Hasselblad provided to a photographer.
(He didnot realise I always use a tripod, he only shot handheld) 😉
The screw threads drove me crazy when a quick shift was needed, but they didn’t fall off…
I liked the Pentacon thread. never trusted those bayonet mounts. I heard that when they wore, the lens could get loose and it would affect the focus. Probably an old photographers’ wives tale…<grin> bert
I never had any problems with the M42 mount, except with long telephoto lenses. You had to screw the camera onto the lens.
This thread is becoming quite a sentimental journey; as far as I know it is typical male behaviour to have these sentiments towards technical issues. Correct me if I’m wrong. 😉
No you are not wrong I had to screw the camera into the 200 mm lens as well. Oh you mean about sentimental journeys of men with machines. Like my first TR3 and the loss of my virg…. never mind … now back to photography.
hmmmmm – I don’t fit into that category (on either score!)- but I miss my original Olympus OM10 …and there is an old Triumph Herald somewhere in rustbucket heaven that I remember with extreme fondness – and it wasn’t even my car….
You had a TR3! My TR4, bought used, was the first real sports car I had. Handled like a barge. Real stiff shifter and the clutch took a lot of stomping on to disengage. The engine and driveline vibration shook the car like an earthquake. Inspite of it all, it’s a memory i am glad I had.
My first (and so far, only) "real" camera was a Canon AV-1. It was an aperture priority model that was manual everything, had a couple of lenses and a motor drive, a pentax flash and a Vivitar tele-converter. I bought it about 20 some years ago. Carried it around inside a tank when I was in the service and on construction sites all over the place. Unfortunately I managed to break the rewind knob a couple of weeks ago and the estimate I got to fix it was more than the body is worth so now I’m trying to decide between the digital Rebel or the 10D. I take what Grant terms as banal photos and the things that the 10D has and the Rebel doesn’t I don’t really even understand so I’m kinda leaning towards the Rebel, with the deals you can get on the 10D kits and the prices I’m seeing on the Rebels (plus another lens besides the one that you can get with it)it works out about the same cost wise. I know Grant has the 10D and I think Ray has the Rebel and I’m wondering how you guys like them?
". I know Grant has the 10D" ****SACRILEGE**** Grant is a Nikon man 😉 Well I do have a Canon G1 but that is not a camera.
All kidding a side I came very, very close in purchasing a 10D. It is a very nice camera but I have too much Nikkor glass, so I pulled back. I am hoping the new Nikon’s D2H prices fall and I may again be tempted.
Chris I think Ray has the 10D not the Rebel. I have a Rebel and like it so far. One of the missing features that was most discussed in the Canon NG is FEC (flash exposure compensation). There is now a free program that offers that feature but you must change it through the computer and not on the fly. You can undo your change in the field without a computer or of course you can bring along a laptop if your willing. You can also get that feature by adding a 550 EX flash. While the 10D has more features I could not justify the additional cost with my limited talent. When, and if that improves I am sure there will be new models to entice me and my $. From the research I did I don’t think many non-professionals would be disappointed with either model. Good luck with your decision.
James, I’ve been watching the 10D since it came out and was just about ready to take the plunge until they came out with the Rebel. One thing’s for sure the $ aspect keeps getting better, now I just worry that 2 weeks after I do commit I’m going to find an even better deal. 🙂 🙁
BTW, nice photos on your Pbase. Every time I see a Rebel or 10d gallery listed in the recent galleries I check it out and both seem to take good photos.
The Digital Rebel doesn’t have ISO 3200, you cannot choose the focus mode and cannot choose the metering mode as well. To me, those features aren’t exactly options. They’re basic. But, if you can master the M mode rapidly, you’ll make good use of the Rebel. Metering mode is set to center on M, otherwise it’s evaluative or center weighted, focus mode switches to AI servo for sport mode, AI one shot for M (this I’m not sure, but it’s something like).
The features missing in the Rebel aren’t very annoying for an average photographer, or for someone making the switch from SLR Rebel to Digital Rebel. Especially the ISO 3200 which is, to me, totally useless. But for someone who had an Elan before (for example), it would make a great difference.
A friend of mine bought a Rebel a few weeks ago. Before that, he was the lucky owner of my previous SLR Rebel. He’s still very happy with his new toy. He said that the lense in the kit really isn’t worth it. He’s using the other lense I gave him with the SLR Rebel.
I still have an original run OM-1 that still chugs along. I was hoping, against hope as it turns out, that Olympus would leap into Digital SLR’s using their original lenses. Guess they were just to old to be used in the digital realm.
The new E1, it seems to me, misses the mark set by the 300d.
James and Ray, Thanks for your comments on the Rebel, mine should be delivered tomorrow hopefully. Can’t wait. Since this will be my first auto-focus camera I’m sure the shortcomings that more experianced photogs talk about won’t affect me and I think it should definetly be of more use in developing my skills than my current point and shoot.
Yes, I got it the day they hit the shelves. I have been wanting to ask you if you have bought an external flash and if so which one did you choose and why? I have been looking and just can’t decide.
James, Susan Stewart cited a link to an incredible discussion of Canon flash technology. I downloaded and printed the whole article – three sections, 80+ pages! I believe it can be found at:
Money was an issue when I did, so I chose the 420ex. I wanted High Speed Synchro option (HF), and the swiveling (moving.. ?) head. Sure, the 550ex would have been nice, but it was 250$ more (C$) at the time. The 420ex will become slave to the 550ex, if I ever get one some day. It’s smaller than then 550ex, and for me, it’s just ideal. The 220 was too limited.
