Professional photojournalists - people who shoot news and sports - have all gone digital, yes.
Professional artistic photographers still use film. Especially medium and large format film. Just as they always have.
35mm is a format of convenience. It was widely used by news photographers because the cameras are small and unobtrusive and easy to use. Now they no longer have any reason to. It was also widely used by amateurs, people just taking snapshots for fun and memories - now, digital fills this niche also.
Many serious professional landscape, nature, and studio photographers still use 4x5 view cameras. There is no way in hell you can reach that level of quality with any digital device currently available. Even the most expensive digital Hasselblad, which costs more than a new car, only gives you the equivalent of a 6x4.5 negative - the smallest of the medium formats.
An AE-1 Program was my first 35mm SLR. Out of the SLRs I listed (some on the list are range-finders), it’s my least favourite. In AE mode you can hear the motors, and it just seems noisy to me. Good camera, and it took good pics even with the 50 mm lens that came with it. But I like the others better. Last time I checked (a few years ago), you’re right that they can be picked up cheaply on eBay.
The OM-4 is an awesome camera except for one thing: There’s no off-switch. If it isn’t going to be used, you need to take the batteries out. (Which you should do with any camera, of course.) There’s a titanium model (OM-4T) body, new-in-box, on eBay for a current bit of $595. I see some used non-titanium ones with lenses for under $300.
Friends of an old girlfriend would as of her (to them, expensive) watch, ‘What does it do?’ She would answer, ‘It tells the time.’ The Pentax K-1000 reminds me of this. It was never expensive. You could get the body, a 50 mm lens, a strap, and lens and body covers at Kmart for $119. It doesn’t do anything for you. Completely manual. ‘What does it do?’ It takes pictures. But you have to do everything yourself. (OK, it does have a light meter ) It’s a great camera for learning how to shoot, since it forces you to expose correctly if you want a good picture. I’ve only scanned eBay, but prices are low.
The Olympus OM-1 and the Nikons: I’ve already mentioned them. The FM2 is like the OM-1, but a little larger and has a faster shutter, and is all black. These are the cameras for which I have extra lenses and motor drives and cases and such. They are very desirable cameras. I haven’t checked eBay prices, as I’m supposed to have been working for 15 minutes now. I’m sure they’re selling for much more than the others. (FWIW, I think I paid $800 for the new FM3a body from B&H Photo when they still had them – maybe they still do; I haven’t checked). I think I paid $50 for an OM10 on eBay, which I bought because I wanted the motor drive it came with. I gave the body, lens, and speed control to my SO.
Someone said to choose the system first. Good advice. But I like different things in different cameras, which is why I have different brands. If you want a ‘new, state-of-the-art’ 35mm SLR, then I assume you want something that does the work for you. As I said, you can get NIB Olympus OM-4s on eBay. I assume you can find NIB Nikons as well. But they’ll cost you. As long as they haven’t been abused, most cameras will be fine used. I’d be careful of the cheaper electronic ones, but the electronics in the FM-series Nikons are supposed to be robust. An Olympus OM-4 or a Nikon FM3a are about as state-of-the-art as you can get without going to a pro camera. If you don’t mind setting the aperture and speed (and focus, of course) yourself, you can’t go wrong with an OM-1.
Watch out for the shutter squeak on Canon A series SLRs. It means the shutter may be close to failure. Of course, a squeaky Canon A series shutter can be close to failure for 20 yrs, but it could also lock up in the next 20 exposures.
Be aware of battery issues with older cameras, too. The may still be available for most of them, but on some of those, they’ll be expensive. On on a few, the voltages are not exactly the same in the new versions. Some people have said that this may cause exposure differences. YMMV
For Nikons, make sure the lens series is the correct one for whatever camera you get. A non AI or an AI only lens may fit on a FA, for example, but not all exposure modes will be available. You need the AIS lenses for that. And some cameras are not compatible with some lenses. A web search will tell you what you need to know.
A good rule of thumb, if you’re not completely familiar with the camera bargain you just found on eBay, RESEARCH IT. A bargain is only a bargain if it works for you.
Another friend of mine is the premiere large format printing business in Kansas City. He is where these folks and most others go to for making large prints of their work. He has film scanners like an Imacon and they are very rarely used, usually only when archival stuff needs to be scanned.
It is possible that I have a distorted view of this, but I’m pretty sure I’m good friends with the five most well-known photographers in Kansas City and, other than the occasional toy camera, all of them are fully digital.
On cost of film developing, the place I go to (just a local camera shop, nothing special) will stop at developing the negs if you ask: you only get back the negatives, no prints. It’s very cheap. I use a negative scanner to make digital ‘prints’ from the negs. If there’s anything I really want printed out, I get it professionally printed from the neg. That doesn’t happen often - most of my photos end up purely digital.
I’m not a professional, just a hobbyist: I like flawed cameras (e.g. my homemade pinhole camera with its unpredictable light leaks, ghostly effects and oddball vintage look, or my older-than-I-am Praktica with itsunpredictable colour weirdness). True, there are filters and the like that will mimic some of those things to a greater or lesser degree - but emotionally, it’s not the same as sending your film off to be processed and getting back an envelope full of surprises, and it doesn’t have that unpredictability, either.
I’d pick up a used Nikon N90 (aka F90) or F100, if you want something with reasonable autofocus, electronics, and frame rate. You can pick these up on eBay for $50-$200 or so. If you want to really kick it old school, the Nikon FM2 is a great body to learn on. The nice thing about that camera is you don’t even need the battery to work to take pictures. You won’t get metering information, but with experience, you can figure that out. When I shot film, I used to always carry one around along with the N90 and F5 because even if all my electronics fail, I at least have a body I can still shoot on.
Yep, that’s one guideline that helps. For those who don’t know, the rule is, on a fully sunny day, to expose for something that is illuminated by the sun, your exposure will be 1/[ISO of the film you are using] at f/16. Doesn’t help when you’re indoors, of course. And, of course, if it’s not sunny, you have to use your judgment to adjust. Open a stop for slightly overcast, another for normal overcast, yet another for heavy overcast, and maybe one more for heavy shade. Luckily, negative film gives you plenty of leeway in your exposure, and if you’re going to err, err on the side of overexposure (with negs; with slides, it’s the opposite.)
And film means a full frame and superior resolution for a miniscule fraction of the cost of a D3. (And that’s just 35mm film.) Larger format film means an enormous viewfinder and off-the-charts resolution, for an even tinier fraction of the cost of one of the digital medium-format monsters that cost as much as a farm.
And it’s better to shoot dozens of good pictures than thousands of shitty ones.
Years ago, I saw a comparison of 35mm film vs a 2/3s crop sensor. The upshot was that even a 6Mpixel sensor beat all but the finest grain films. These days, even budget SLRs have sensors that outperform 35mm film. Here is a website that does some comparisons, but it’s not the one I remember seeing:
Yeah, sarcasm. I think pretty much every pro that’s not engaged in some sort of retro-artsy thing uses digital. He said “better to shoot dozens of shitty pictures than thousands of bad ones” as if the gap in resolution were so big that digital cameras could only take bad images in comparison, or that resolution is the only factor.
I’m constantly amazed at the results I get out of a 12MP camera with good glass vs. scanned 35mm film and the same glass. I bought a film scanner a few years ago to archive some of my old work, and was utterly and completely shocked at just how much grain there is in film vs. digitial. Now, I’m not saying grain is a bad thing, per se, and film grain is definitely prettier than digital noise, but we’ve gotten so spoiled with digital. I’d estimate that even 50 ISO Velvia has more grain/noise than my D3 shot at 1600 ISO. It is absolutely incredible what kind of lighting conditions you can shoot in these days and get nearly noise-free results.
That said, I still love the look of black-and-white film printed on fiber paper. I just bought myself an enlarger in the hopes that one day I might bring back a little bit of the film workflow. I still have all my film cameras, and I’ve shot maybe 2 rolls of film in the past 8 years, and only remembered to develop one of them.
I had a B&W darkroom for many years, and eventually got a color enlarger and did some Cibachrome work. I found darkroom work to be a lot of fun, but it’s messy, time consuming, error-prone, and very, very expensive. The only way I would go back to that technology is if I was doing high-end art photography, and then I would probably do some non-mainstream process like Platinum or Gum printing.
To be fair, a lot of film scanners really accentuate the grain in film, making it look worse than it normally would. I had an old Nikon LED-based scanner that was awful for that.
Still, a modern digital SLR will typically show noticeably less noise than comparable film would show grain, especially at higher ISO ratings. And for most applications, lower noise/grain does more to make the image look better than higher resolution does. Which means that a noiseless digital image will often look better than a grainy film image, even if the film technically has higher resolution.
One of the more popular processes for my photography, in terms of prints sold, is printing on canvas. I don’t know exactly what the current process is compared to 2 decades ago, but it comes out looking superb from even my lowest resolution digital files. And the price is amazingly low compared to back then.
I agree alternative processes is the way to go if you’re going to go back to a wet darkroom. The thing I miss most about it, and maybe this is just through the filter of nostalgia, was the zen-like trance it would induce in me. I remember many nights of printing in the darkroom after we put the (college) paper to bed, and when I came out, the birds would be chirping and dawn would be cracking, six or more hours later. It’s also amazing at how good you become reading a negative–I didn’t even bother with test strips after a few days’ practice in the darkroom.
Crop-sensor DSLR might be equal or even superior in some cases to 35mm film.
Medium-format film still destroys any DSLR.
I already conceded before that 35mm film is basically obsolete for professionals. But medium format film is still used by professionals. If you it wasn’t, you’d be able to buy a Fuji GX680 or a Mamiya 7 for 100 dollars. You can’t. These cameras still command four-figure prices, and it’s not because they’re collectibles - it’s because they’re highly functional tools.
) It’s a great camera for learning how to shoot, since it forces you to expose correctly if you want a good picture. I’ve only scanned eBay, but prices are low.
