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Unchained

Posted by
Richard Irwin (Belper, United Kingdom) on 10 January 2009 in Abstract & Conceptual.

Here begins a new chapter.

With the new year now 10 days in, and not far off two years since I came onto AM3, I have decided to re-focus my objectives. - no, I'm not quitting the blog, read on...

Rather, I have taken a fresh look at what I want to get out of photography, and I am going back to shooting more film than digital, and it will mostly be B&W.

I have been experimenting for 5 or 6 years now with digital capture, and I greatly enjoy the flexibility and versatility of the various digital cameras I own. However, recently I have started to feel that I am just not getting the 'hands on' link between me and my photography. For all its speed and convenience, I have found that digital has become for me, perhaps a bit too 'throwaway' : I guess I have been taking far too many lazy snapshots, and my photo editing is all too formulaic. I can't remember the last time I set up any lighting, or even used a tripod.

In early December 2008, I dusted down some film gear that had spent too long at the back of the cupboard, loaded up a roll of medium format B&W film (which had an expiry date ten years ago), and went out to re-think things photographically. I had a feeling that I needed to recapture the essence of craft in my own photography. So. with just 15 shots to take (it was a 645 camera), and all day to work it out, I actually had a fantastic time, call it a moment of epiphany if you will. Following the shoot, there was the anticipation of processing the negatives, and the tangibility of the developed film in my hands. I re-discovered the craft of scanning the negatives with Silverfast, and I really enjoyed the editing of these scanned negatives in Photoshop.

Anyway, to bring things to the point of this post, I'm interested to know if anyone else has also recently started using (or has never stopped) using film? I'm going to start up a collaborative blog/wiki to explore photography, with a part devoted to film based photography, and would love anyone on this site to contribute (I will post details some time soon). I'm interested in peoples views and experiences. I have a feeling that there is going to be a lot of photographers returning to film based photography in the next few years. And this is my opinion - I think that the accumulated technology and quality of film still surpasses digital in every area except convenience (no horrid colour banding and a huge range of tones, no blown highlights and beautiful shadow details, film is a physical object, and I have a massive exposure latitude when shooting etc). Prices for professional quality second hand film gear is inexpensive (so get out and buy that Hasselblad or Nikon F5 you always wanted now while they are still affordable). There is something special about the physical presence of the image on a negative or slide, its not just a file on a hard drive. I was chatting to some photography students a few weeks ago, and many of them have only known digital cameras. When I suggested they try film, some said they were scared to commit to a system where they couldn't see the image on a screen - Is digital creating a lack of confidence in our own abilities to accurately expose an image? Are we losing the craft?

If you read this far, many thanks for persevering with my rambling.

.....Oh yes, this image was taken on film, with Ilford Delta 400 to be precise. I used a second hand Nikon F100, which I bought for next to nothing, and an even cheaper Nikon 35-70mm AF zoom lens, which dates from around 1990, oh and I stuck a red filter on the lens to darken the sky tone. This image was taken on December 26th 2008, at a place called Wirksworth which is near to where I live in Derbyshire. The negative was scanned at a mere 3200dpi using Silverfast scanning software on an Epson F3200, which resulted in an image 3000X4500 pixels (around 13.5MP, and that scanner can go much higher than that if I need to print at A1 or larger). The image was reduced to about 530X800 pixels for AM3.