old amateur

[smoke665]

I have a 30 inch diagonal Apple cinema display, a 43 inch TV, and a 21-inch iMac, and two smart phones...I see they majority of my images on-screen, and have since 2001...yeah, prints are nice, but these days, screens are where _the majority_ of images are seen.

As technology has changed how we capture the image, so has it changed the way we display the image. For about the price of a nice frame and print, you can now buy a wifi enabled digital frame of equal size or larger, that will automatically display your digital images off a cloud drive. No changing out prints, no covering your walls with multiple frames and no dusting all those frames.

 

[Dave442]

Digital allowed me to start playing with my color images like I played with my B&W images in the darkroom.

I have boxes of negatives and slides, there is nowhere local I can take those to have a print made. So I have to scan them and then I am in the digital world - so it is much simpler today to start digital and then print.

While I print a small percent of my images, the local lab gives a decent discount for batches of over 100 4x6 prints (and I am only printing the images I want and not every image as was common when shooting film).

And for indoor shots and out in the woods, I have come to prefer digital over film.

 

[Derrel]

I have fully embraced digital after 25 or so years with film. Film was always demanding of money and time. Digital is fast, and the cost of "consumables" is affordable. No film costs, no development costs, no costs for chemicals and so on. Digital shooting is not "free" by any means, since cameras and computers and software cost money. A couple decades ago I figured that film photos cost me about 43 cents each,which at the time seemedextremely high to me, but that's what it cost.I figure that today approximately $.50 per frame would be a pretty good average on film photos.
One of the biggest advantages of digital is the lack of film, meaning that one can shoot one picture,two pictures,14 frames?16 frames, 27, or 38 frames or 138 frames, or wven 599 frames. In a roll film or 35mm based system rolls are either 12 shot,or 24 frame, or 36 shot. Meaning that one must either waste film or wait until an entire roll has been exposed before developing. similarly if one suddenly needs a slower or faster ISO film, one needs to switch rolls of film. With digital, one can change the ISO from frame to frame to frame to frame.
The vast majority of the world has left film and its ecosystem behind, just as the majority of the world has abandoned the landline telephone, and the phonebook in favor of mobile phones and the World Wide Web.
We are basically almost 2 decades in to the era of digital photography, and the vast majority of people are now using the new technology which I understand is not what some people like. We were at a similar place 30 years ago between the CD And the vinyl LP for music. While turn tables have never completely gone away, and film will likely never go away completely, the everyday world is the world of music stored digitally, and photographic images stored digitally

 

[vintagesnaps]

That's the everyday world, the people who years ago would have been the ones using a P&S, or earlier, Instamatics! Not necessarily people who are photographers.

If you want to shoot film, shoot film. I still do, always have. I also have a digital camera (and do Polaroids, etc.) But it is more costly so I'm more selective. I found it hard at first to send film out because I want to go in a real camera store and hand it over the counter and know it is not leaving the building!! But that's no longer an option so I got used to sending it out.

I've been using Dwayne's in Kansas - I like that they do wet prints done in chemistry if I want color 4x6s. It's a matter of picking and choosing if you want film developed, scans, CDs, prints, etc. etc. There's also The Darkroom in San Clemente which I've used, and Richard lab in California which I haven't tried yet. There are others...

As far as repair it would depend on if it's worth the money or if it'd be better to get another used Yashica body. Try asking Webestang, or OldCam... (I can't think of everyone's exact user names so maybe they'll see this). Depends on what needs to be done, I have a pair of camera repair books by Tomosy that are out of print but using those as a resource, a bit of tinkering I can do myself.

 

[pocketshaver]

I admit the film changing as an issue.

The 120 roll DOES seem brilliant if you can get a good camera for cheap.

 

[JonFZ300]

I loved shooting film back in the day. I shot Velvia, Provia, etc... and got 5x7 prints made and even got some blown up larger for presents and whatnot. I'm not a film hater at all. Having said that, if I was "getting back into it" I wouldn't even consider film. The money, inconvenience of developing and printing, etc. has already been mentioned.

If you don't have a computer or don't want to mess with one, there are several ways to sort digital pics for printing. You can go out and take a hundred pictures or more, come home and go through them using your camera's lcd screen, delete the ones you don't want and take what's left to a variety of different stores and get them printed out. Most cameras now will send the pics to a smartphone via wifi. You can even upload the pics online and get prints in the mail if you don't want to go to a store.

I get wanting to see prints and hold them in your hand but you can easily have that experience with digital with way less time and money spent and way less hassle. Not that mailing film and waiting for prints is some horrible task but for the same amount of effort (or less) it takes to post on this forum, you can get prints made and delivered.

When I shot film and got 5x7s printed, it was pretty much a dollar per print all things considered. Now I have a $400 camera that does what I want it to do, the memory cards I use cost $18 dollars and, without video, they hold about 4500 shots at the highest quality setting. I can't remember the last time I got prints made but they are as low as 9 cents for 4x6s with 3-day shipping.

I know you're going to end up with film but it's food for thought.

 

[pocketshaver]

my purposes have changed somewhat, SOMEWHAT.

Im looking at doing the following things:
outdoor/nature/birds
macro
indoor
casual portraits
"not safe for work"

I accept that 35mm may not give me the ability to enlarge well at all, but a vintage medium format gives nearly unlimited enlargement options.

A dslr gives me easy peasy macro, enlargement, although I always see medium format dslr cameras as being 5-10 times the price....
Any input on that aspect?

 

[JonFZ300]

Yeah if you want to make huge prints, medium format film is probably better than 24 megapixel digital. If you're doing 11x14 or even small posters, almost any modern digital SLR camera will do the trick.

As for the list of the various things you want to do, that's more about the lenses than the camera body.

 

[pocketshaver]

Id like to have the potential to make something poster size of GOOD subject material.

Im looking at Canon cameras for a DSLR. They seem to be "right price range with enthusiast level quality"