it’s nice to know that sometimes i’m right. it’s not that often this happens, so i’m relishing in it right now.
why, do you wonder, is john so annoyingly smug?
because when i rolled the dice and stuck with film during The Great Digital Camera Push of the early aughts, i was right. or at least it’s starting to look that way. see, seems that lots of the photogs who made a complete switch to digi are now trolling ebay to reclaim their hassys.
turns out that these past several years of pixel-perfect imagery and digi photo composites have made some in the media industry weary. it’s like spending the past four years watching only “300” when you really wanted to watch woody allen flicks.
i’ve been reading lots of photog blogs, talking about “the mystery” and “romance” of shooting film. looks like some are actually even shooting a few rolls here and there. and did i recently peep a nachtwey essay on the congo, published in time mag with black borders circa 1980s? now, i know there’s all sorts of photoshop filters out there that will let you fake black borders onto digi files, but seems like nachtwey isn’t the type to do that. so therefore i’m going to have to assume that he did it the old fashioned way.
(also seems like another photo vet is still shooting film. tony suau shot an essay on the economic crisis in cleveland with leicas and tri-x. his pics ultimately won him this year’s world press photo of the year. read the pdn piece about this here…)
so this makes me feel really good that i didn’t give up on film. in fact, the majority of my current portfolio was shot on good ole provia 100 and nps 160.
but not to say that i’m some luddite who can’t work his ipod. i know my way around cs4, and is pretty damn savvy with the raw processing of my canon digi files. in fact, i’m really good at it. so much so, that i’ve lately been finding myself fondling my trusty 5d more than my hassy or crown graphic. dealing with a 4 gig card is SOOOO much more convenient than loading 4×5 holders.
seeing this resurgence in film shooting makes me feel a bit better about not getting in on the first batch of 5d mkIIs that hit the waiting lists back in november. i was getting a bit envious of these pretty 60-meg files in all their 14-bit color glory. really sweet stuff.
it also makes me very happy that i pulled the trigger on a nikon 9000 coolscan last summer when i saw it pop up on b&h. that thing is perpetually out of stock. but man, does it scan some nice 2 1/4.
Eating Films 