[Leica] La joie de film

[dnygr at cshore.com (Douglas Nygren)]

While many note the satisfaction of being able to quickly review what 
they have taken with a digital camera, I'd like to note that there is 
also a joy that comes when you develop your film and see what you've 
got.

I often know which shots will be the best when I take them and this 
feeling is confirmed in the darkroom. But there are times a photo I 
didn't think would be so good turns out to be a winner. It's a treat to 
find these photos on the newly developed negatives just as it's a joy 
to open the tank and to see how the roll turned out. Those joys are 
gone in the digital world.

And again I note that to get an excellent print, you need to work, 
whether it is in the wet darkroom or in photoshop. The advantage of 
digital is that you can store your finished product and reproduce it at 
will whereas a traditional print has to be worked up by hand. Another 
advantage of digital is that you can easily email it off and you can 
wash your hands of all the steps you had to do before to get a print to 
a client.

That said, I'd like to note that the shoot, burn, hand off and run 
practice that many a professional practices now can have a down side 
when the photographer burns his work in format not readily available to 
a client, as happened recently to a business I know of. A well-known 
photographer gave his client a disc burned in Nikon files that the 
client couldn't open and had to get outside help with to view.

I use both film and digital. I must admit  don't get much pleasure from 
the digital whereas film is still a joy to use. I even enjoy opening up 
the boxes the film comes in.


Doug