Nice Photos.

Faro and her two lovely foals, not quite a yearling and not quite two years old, taken in 1979, I think. Might have been 1978. Anyway the camera was an Agfa Synchrobox, and the film an eight exposure 120 roll.

ATB from George

Which one will eat the other!

ATB from George

Neither.

Good news!

And I shall endeavour to post a few good pix on this lovely thread - my inspiration so many years ago.

ATB from G

I sold my lovely Contax about 5 years ago, a trusty camera owned since buying new in 1988.

But due to the lack of expense or hassle of developing and printing in the computer age, moving to digital camera was the right move to me. I was consoled by selling it to someone who appreciated what it was and was very pleased with it’s condition [a guy with a Japanese name who lived in London].

Looking at his flickr site he was a far better photographer than i’ll ever be, and good to know my old 159 is out there somewhere taking super pictures : )

Taken on Olympus C-300 Zoom (3.0 Megapixel) - under full spectrum kitchen lighting : )

My Olympus C 300 takes fairly good photos considering it's a old cheapo digital, far better than most camera-phones anyway.

However, i have a new digital camera now so may start to post here soon.

Debs

Bit of a dull day in Downpatrick

What is Ueli looking at?

"...I sold my lovely Contax about 5 years ago, a trusty camera owned since buying new in 1988...."

Doh!

I know what you mean though about film. Every year, the quality of procsessing seems to get more varied, even from the established firms out there and the costs...Well too much, too often

There are some firms though who just do the processing and email you digital images and a couple of them are quite reasonably priced and they personally process each film, rather than a purely machine based process.

I keep telling myself I'm a die hard but I just like using (some) film cameras.

The quality of digital now though can be stunning really and there is such a selection of truly excellent digital cameras out there (even just 5 years ago can't compare) that using film cameras, particularly 35mm, is a bit luddite.

Occasionally run a film through my 1931 Leica 1c. No meter of course so a nice challenge guessing the exposures.

G

My guess - 2nd from the left.

G

Genius! How do you know that?

The picture is of The Boy's band after they won the 'pop and rock' section of the Portsmouth Music Festival a few weeks ago. It's taken with my little Fujifilm X10.

I am a genius.

You must be proud. My son had a stint of bass in the school rock band but has given it up unfortunately. 

It's a nice feeling watching them perform - you see their independence and vulnerability simultaneously.

G

I like the body language of the girl graduating to the young bassman, only for the chap on her other side (drummer?) to be noticing this and perhaps feeling left out...

One of the things I have pondered as my cameras have evolved is just how digital compares to film and how phones compare with DSLR's.  Just spotted this article which strikes me as a superb review on the subject.

http://connect.dpreview.com/po...sus-dslr-versus-film

I have to say I'm a bit astonished.  The Nokia phone gets very close indeed to a Nikon D800 fitted with a pro level lens and in terms of colour balance in daylight is perhaps even closer to Fuji Velvia film.  The Canon DSLR's show that improvements in sensor resolution from 6 to 10 megapixels over several years in daylight make less difference than upgrading from a standard kit lens to high end glass.  As a keen amateur and lifelong owner of various Pentax SLR's and DSLR's (bought my first a Pentax ME Super in 1981!) I'm a bit disappointed frankly to find that SLR's can be so easily matched by something which has a camera bolted on as an adjunct to its main function!

What is glorious however is the colour richness and impact of film when compared to digital - just look at the leaves in the photo on the right.  The Nikon D800 is pulling out a whole lot more detail but it lacks vibrancy to my eyes.  Is this akin to why vinyl on a good day is arguably superior to digital?

Jonathan

Good read. I'm not sure if we can be conclusive about the optical/aesthetic merits of film over digital when comparing the results on a computer screen. Colour and suturation can be widely adjusted on digital images whether derived from a scan (a digital imaging process in itself) or digital all the way. Film grain can be convincingly replicated in software. Any tonal balance or specific feel associated with specific types of film can also be easily replicated.

It always amuses me when people claim that film is in some way better than digital. Especially when they are attempting to show scans of film on a cheap (and most people only have cheap) screens that have had contrast / brightness / saturation / white balance adjustments.

This had an ektachrome profile applied as a starting point

Yep. Film certainly isn't neutral in any sense. My Velvia now looks terribly "red" compared to my digital images. Yeah you can adjust when printing, but with conventional darkroom methods, that is a tedious hit-and-miss affair for all but the most adept.

Digital gives me effortless control over the look of my images. The ability to shoot any ISO I want to, all with the same body without changing films is a remarkable benefit. The high ISO performance of new sensors is without comparison in the film world. Relatively cheap per-image costs (just my time really) allow me to shoot far more "bursts" and have far more failures than with film. I would never try "bird in flight" shots on film. It would send me broke. At 24Mp, my new D610 easily exceeds 35mm film resolution allowing large prints (not that I do that much). I can even make my digital images look like film if I want to.

Film forces some limits on the photographer, perhaps sparking greater creativity. A little similar to heading out with just one prime lens, rather than a zoom, or bagful of lenses. This works for some. For me, I love the flexibility and power of digital, and feel under-gunnned without a half-dozen lenses in the bag.

This is a 6Mp crop out of a 24Mp full-frame image. Hand held from the bow of a moving boat with a 400mm lens. ISO1600, 1/1000th and f/7.1. Selected from over a 100 attempts over the course of about 15 minutes as these birds flew in front of the boat. OK, not an award-winning image, but for me, a memory of the evening that is simply not achievable on film.

Oh, and certainly not achievable with an iPhone.

Adobe corner

Harsh