Comment by Noaidi
21 hours ago
This is just depressing to me having literally grown up in a darkroom.
"For years my process looked like this: load film and take photos, ....[blah blah blah]... the exported image."
"At first this was an exciting process for me. Then as the number of rolls increased, so did my effort to do this for 36 frames per roll."
I shot black and white film sine the 70's, medium and 35mm. I would develop the negatives and prints myself. The complete process was a joy. I never printed every shot, but I put care into each shot I processed. I was careful when I took a photograph, because the cost limited how much I shot. This made me a better photographer.
I later started scanning my film with a Nikon CoolScan (this was in the late 90's) and i already started hating it. Then I started full digital and now I do not shoot anymore (I was semi professional with Art work published in national magazines).
"My part is now the part I can thoroughly enjoy, which is looking at the results I’ve snapped and finding inspiration to snap more."
Why do any of this just shoot digital if you do not care about the process?
Some aspects of the process seem more like labor than a form of self-expression. I think if you are into the limitations of shooting film photos it makes sense.
As someone who printed B&W in a darkroom until last year, yeah that. My sanity seems to have been improved by selling it all and just shooting digital.
Hell I even shoot jpegs with Nikon picture control baked in now. No post editing at all.
I’m having fun again.
When I showed my Konica Hexar to a younger colleague, he said, but how do you get the pictures into the computer. It was like a world opened for him when I said that I don't.
I agree in part, in that it is sad that this person does not have access to a darkroom. As someone who is also now shooting film and then camera scanning, I would love to have access to a darkroom. It's just a compromise film shooters have to make, and often at no fault to them. It's either too expensive (which the negatives already are), or too far away/too big to fit in modern homes, or more likely both.
We're just grateful that film is still available at all.