I was out all day in the city shooting with my new Mamiya (with a smile on my face). Came home and got lost somewhere on the internet, found an american photographers webpage. Proved to be an eye opener and I realized some stuff that have been bothering me for quite some time now, just that I had gotten used to it...
Jeff Singer is a professional photographer in San Francisco and what he was writing on his blog just made so much sense to me. I really couldn't have said this better (my English isn't that good, thats why...). My day shone up and I realized that I did a pretty decent thing by getting an old medium format camera again, going back from film to digital, to film again.
To read that other people shooting for a living also have sensed that film makes you a better photographer in a way that digital can't, was great for me. After shooting film I found digital really disturbing the first couple of jobs and the debate at that time was always in a pretty mundane tone. Like two camps and you either was this or that. I was always "that" i.e. the slow dude who had just learnt a new language, the digital language and still spoke like a child.
The first digital camera I bought was really a piece of worthless junk in my perspective. I graded up to better stuff and got to learn and respect the way it made some stuff so much more convenient and saved me so much time and money. But I also noticed that the same images that I would get with my 35mm and 6x4,5 gear suddenly needed time to tumble in a software to have a similar feel to them. Well, this is all history by now but I never thought that I would stand in front of that monster fridge at my old camera store here in Tokyo and pick rolls of film like groceries again.
This is a quote from Jeff Singer on his blog:
-"This isn’t digital vs film quality debate. I’m not going to say one is of better quality than the other. I’m not shooting film again for quality reasons. They are just different. I shoot differently when shooting film. I like the way I shoot with film. I slow down and think about things more than I would with digital. And anything that can get me to think has to be good".
Well said Jeff, and thanx!
1 comment:
Even though I am in a whoooole other league than you and still trying to figure it all out then I still get it. I shoot different with film than with my digital. Even though I use my little russian LC-A I still feel a big difference. It is so true. You feel it more somehow. Think differently about your shot. And what fun it is to go film shopping!
More geekiness soon!
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