Civil War Bugle
Chickamauga National Military Park
Nikkormat, 100mm f2.8 Vivitar lens, Kodak Kodachrome 25 film
(Click to enlarge)
Blog Note: All the photographs leading off these posts on the topic of film vs. digital photography were made on fiilm.
In the early days of this century I was opposed to digital photography and thought I would never switch. I preferred the "look" of film and considered digital images flat and lacking in contrast. Also, to be honest, I was proud of my finely honed skills in shooting and processing film, skills that made my work stand out.
By early 2003 I was doing commercial photography with a Fuji GX680, an enormous beast of a camera that made a negative nearly 2x3 inches in size, and weddings with 35mm color negative film. Neither of these cameras was cheap to operate. Even with 35mm film, covering a wedding properly meant a significant outlay in film and processing costs.
Meanwhile, digital cameras were getting better, and prices, while still very high, were coming down.
At the Southwestern Photojournalism Seminar in Fort Worth, Texas in March, 2003, I had a long talk with my friend Bill Bangham, a distinguished photojournalist who was at that time editor of the award-winning Southern Baptist World Missions magazine. I told Bill my concern that digital photography would result in a loss of control, making me into a mere button-pusher, with most of the control going to the editor.
Bill responded that photographing digitally would give me more control, not less. So I began to consider the advantages of digital more seriously. The outcome was that I sold my GX680 equipment and searched the sofa for loose change and bought Canon's recently introduced 10D for the princely sum (or so it seemed to me) of three thousand dollars -- about five times what I paid for a Canon A2 film body in 1995.
To this day I have a love/hate relationship with digital photography. As I said above, I liked the "look" of film and still do. In fact, I process my photos to look as much like film as possible. And while some complained about slide film's lack of dynamic range, I never found it to be a handicap.
But the photography world was changing and it was either change with it or be left behind. So I changed. But I still miss film.
Photograph and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins
I post each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.
Soli Gloria Deo
For the glory of God alone
Tags: Dave Jenkins, film photography, digital photography, Nikkormat, Vivitar, Kodachrome, Fuji GX680, Canon 10D, Canon A2, Southern Baptist World Missions
I made the switch to digital out of necessity. I was freelancing for a small weekly newspaper and had just made the jump from Olympus cameras to Nikon for autofocus that I believed that I needed for shooting high school sports. I picked up a D1 and D1h but a year later bit the bullet and purchased a D2H. It would be a camera that I would use until 2013 for both personal and professional shooting. When I left the world of newspapers, I did eventually sell all my Nikon gear in favor of lightweight Fuji mirrorless cameras. But I am with you, there are times I miss processing a couple of rolls of Tri-X and seeing that I actually did get some photographs!
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