Inspired by Digital?

[jeroen]

Personally, after getting a digital compact I started shooting more then I ever did. Funny thing is that I started photographing 20 years ago (including making my own BW prints) and lately I took my trusty 30 year old camera and shot some stuff on film again. I had the films scanned and burned on CDrom and I liked the results.
My new DSLR will arrive in a couple of weeks...

 

[jstuedle]

I just wanted to add that film will never die. It will always have a following just like some people prefer records to cd's.

No, film will never die. But I believe digital will become cheap enough that it will replace single use film cameras, one hour photo labs and almost all average consumer film use. Film will be more expensive than digital as the economies of scale swing in its favor and well away from films advantage. Look forward to special order film in a few sizes and a couple of speeds from a manufacture, maybe two but I doubt it. Look forward to compounding your own chemistry and having many of the ingredients controlled. I really believe film will be for the elite artist and not for the struggling among us. This might take several decades, but it might happen sooner than we expect.

 

[LaFoto]

Alexecho (), I am only now getting into this conversation and have read only about the first half of it, now I am itching to reply even though I might be repeating things that have been said before in the second half.

But I feel I am kind of "following you in your path".
While, unlike yourself, I never took any photography class ever in all my life and therefore could not be critisised to a point where I would lose all interest, I did start out with film (nothing else to be had at the time, digital photography was unthought of then!) and a tiny camera (Rollei35), then at some point in time gained access to an SLR (my husband's cheap one that he had at the time and quickly "lost" to me :greenpbl: ), later got myself the Canon EOS 500N that you can (barely) see in my sig ... and 6 months ago got myself my first own compact digital camera.

So I have come from the film, am still using film - and with great pleasure, as long as lenses and camera work well (!) - and ... and now this is the news: have developed an urgent desire to go back "to the roots" and start taking photos also (i.e. in addition to what I am already doing) with a very manual-only camera these days, just so I am forced to learn more, look better, and get the kind of "eye" that Marctwo is speaking about. So yes, in a way, digital photography has inspired me to look for more, and to look for the "roots" and to test out myself, my long-lost abilities to meter and focus a photo and to thus learn even more.

The enthusiasm has grown with the digital camera.

But I feel that also my acceptance has grown and I see virtue in any kind of photography now. (Whether I will still see any "good" in my newest experiment with the camera that I brought home with me from my last weekend's visit to my sister's is yet to show, I haven't finished the film as yet ... while I have taken digital photos worth the amount of three rolls of film in the mean time . Kind of proves Marctwo's thoughts, right?)