Why digital or film?

Regular readers will know I recently bought two film cameras, a Fujica GW690, and a Canon 7.  (Here's a photo of them both.) Plus the Canon 6D mk2 I've had for several years, and an older Canon T6i. To say nothing of a fairly current iPhone, which is a pretty capable camera for most subjects in most light, and is probably all the camera that most people need.

I borrowed a pair of film cameras from my friend Sean to see if I liked shooting film, and I did, though those particular cameras didn't feel happy in my hands. Then I discovered the GW690, and love shooting that. Then the Canon 7 because who can afford a Leica?

So now I have the question, why would I shoot a particular scene on one particular camera, and not another? The trite answer is that it depends on which I'm carrying at the moment. I might have gone out with a specific camera or specific lens to look for suitable images, and happened to come across a scene where I wish I'd been carrying a different camera. It's happened any number of times, and that was before I bought the film cameras.

I'm still noodling through, but thought I would talk about what I intend to shoot with each camera, recognizing there's some overlap.

The easy one first, the iPhone. 

Documents to be sent to someone. Taking a photo of a scene for the meta data, typically the location. In a related sense, I might take a photo of a scene taken with another camera to help remember what colour those scooters actually were, or what the phone thought a particular scene looked like. When I want to capture a scene, and it happens to be the only camera available. If I need to put a photo on social media right now. The V word, as required, which is really rare.

Another easy one, the T6i.

I use this and a macro lens to photograph the film negatives to create a digital image. Plus it's a backup during an important shoot in case something happens with the main camera. Plus, sometimes during night shoots I'll set it up pointing in a different direction than the main camera. Or I'll lend it to a particular friend if we go for a camera walk. She loves doing macro shots with a 'real' camera.

Canon 6D mk2.

This is the workhorse camera. I'll use it for races, community association events, trips, and client shoots. I'm usually still taking it on walks where I intend to shoot film, with the intent of capturing something I don't want to use film for. Or dialling in on exposure settings in tricky situations. Or when HDR is needed. Or night sky shots where I want to capture many exposures in a row. Or where I need a long lens, or a really wide lens. Or when I want to capture a film image as digital for whatever reason. There are many 'or' situations here. I have no intention of jumping on the mirrorless bandwagon, though in a sense, I already have. Both the film cameras are mirrorless in the usual sense of the word.

GW690

The joy of this camera is the huge negatives, nearly 6 x 9 cm, meaning an enormous amount of detail can be captured. The fixed lens on this camera is a 90mm, which means it's about the same as a 40mm lens on a 35mm camera. In practice that means a bit wider than normal, which is considered to be a 50mm lens. Buying and developing film costs about $3 a photo, so I'm not going to take shots on a whim. They are almost certainly going to be carefully considered and composed as best I can. So landscapes or group portraits in a setting. Shots where there is lots of detail and texture (see May 2022 Image of the Month). Art (which could mean darn near anything, but I'm not going to get into it here.) 

Canon 7

A much smaller and more nimble camera. Not quite a shirt pocket size, but it will go into a generous jacket pocket. It's about a third the cost of the GW690 per photo, so I'm more willing to take risky shots, and have fun with it. Experiment with different films. Urban scenes. Informal portraits. 

As an added bonus, the film cameras are great conversation starters. Walk around taking photos with the big DSLR or a phone, and typically nobody pays any attention. But film, I've had several people come up and ask about the cameras. That's fun.

The overlap.

This is a bit of an odd situation. Most people look around and they see what they see. Something shiny or unusual might catch their eye, or some clever bit of advertising, or a specific thing they're looking for. Or maybe the woman in the red dress.

Most photographers are looking for something that will make a good photograph, and even more specific, one that can be made with the equipment on hand. It's remarkable how specific this can be. If the 70-200 lens is the one on hand, I'm not going to 'see' macro or close up shots. If I've got my mind set that I'm going to shoot a scene on film, even if I've got the digital camera with me, I'm likely to think of it as a sophisticated light meter, not a camera.

An example, you ask? Last weekend I worked with Michelle on trying to get a nice selfie in B&W. Read the back story here. As it happens, I took the GW690 and some black and white film (Acros II, if you're interested) with the idea I might try portraits with that film. After we finished the digital photos, I put the film in the camera, tweaked the settings, and coached Michelle on finding focus. Several clicks. We moved outside and tried that. I did not think of using the digital camera while we were doing these shots, not even a little bit. I was concentrating on the film experience.

These are not intended to be formal portraits, but rather to find out how skin looks with this particular film, without any lighting tricks. If you remember the selfie post, I'm sitting in the same place for that first shot. Then outdoors, in the shade. The background is whatever it happens to be. There is no special editing to soften skin or try to create 'dramatic' light.

As ought to be obvious, these are not selfies. Michelle did really well holding a big camera at a fairly slow shutter speed. These are all cropped a bit to an 8x10 format, but there's still lots of detail left; I could crop in much further. Something to keep in mind if I want to do a tight head and shoulders shot.

Michelle is in really harsh mid-day sun here. I tried softening the shadows, but what I really needed was someone to hold a reflector or something to create some shade. Or move elsewhere, but the chair was so comfortable...

Another from a slightly different angle, with slightly different settings, making a subtle change in skin texture. Pity about the the change in the fencing and bright spot in the upper left. Note to self, bring the reflector package next time.

An all round great learning experience. I'm not as un-photogenic as I thought. Being relaxed in front of the camera is really important. I love what a fairly wide open lens does to the background. B&W and all the shades in between can be really interesting. I think film (carefully done) is more flattering for my skin than digital, but then again, with editing anything is possible. Michelle just looks great on film or digital, B&W or colour. 

Ukrainian colour on Fuji Superia 200

There's a couple overlapping stories here, and I've been unsure how to tell them. So let's start with with the event itself, and when it veers into film stuff, the readers not interested in film can stop. How's that for a deal?

My friend (which is a simple word for a multi-faceted relationship) Michelle recently (in the great scheme of things) got several tattoos done by a talented Ukrainian artist. Anya told her about a downtown walk to fund raise for Ukrainian war relief efforts. I heard about it and thought it would be a great way to try out the Canon 7 and Fuji Superia 200 colour film in an urban setting.

A short digression. I don't have any Ukrainian ancestors, as far as I know, but I'm still horrified by what is being done to Ukraine. My massage therapist has Ukrainian ancestry, and I've donated some money to her, to flow to aid efforts. There's a lot of personal initiatives to funnel money to various forms of relief. Whatever works. 

We met up with the group, and tried to ignore the very bad Christian rappers importuning the growing crowd. I don't know if that's their regular beat, or they knew of the walk and decided to try to convert some souls. They were not successful. It was very bad rap.

I loved the colour and intricate needlework! They sang as they walked, and though I didn't understand the words, I could tell it was deeply meaningful to many of the walkers. A few of the photos worked out. At the end M and I went for a fancy ice cream cone, and did some further strolling and more photos. Because taking photos of M is such a hard thing to do.  

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Only 6 photos out of the roll, you ask? What happened? Two and half things. Not all the film got shot during the walk, some of it was after. Some of the time I blew the focus on the Canon 7, my bad. And some of it gets into a complicated film thing. Non-film people might just want to scroll down to enjoy the photos, and skip the text.

I'm mostly pleased with the colours coming out of the Superia 200. Look at the red of the bridge in photo 7A, that's pretty close to the colour it actually is. The rich yellow and blues came out quite nicely, and the green of the trees looks right. 

However, that film hated Michelle's skin. That's one of the complicated film things. The two A photos below are the Superia 200, and I had to work hard to get her skin to come out even this nice. Given some selfie experiments yesterday with my face, I can only imagine how badly that film would treat my skin. Yet, scroll up again and look at the woman in photo 4. I didn't do anything special in editing, and her skin looks great.

The other complicated thing is converting the negative to digital. In simple terms, I take a photo of the negative with a macro lens, and normally it is simple. The negative goes into a holder that is supposed to keep the film flat. Click, done. Most negatives are pretty flat so it isn't hard.

Except if the film isn't flat, the digital camera image will be out of focus or distorted. That's what happened to many of the photos from the walk. This film curls hard in 3 dimensions. It curls up like it was in the little canister it comes in, it also cups from side to side, and worst of all it twists longitudinally. (No, I don't think the lab would have done anything different with this film, compared to other films.)

I also think it's a fraction of a mm narrower than other films, which makes it even harder. It is brutal to get it flat in the holder. Some of the shots I could tell looking at the negative they were out of focus, so I didn't mind those. But the rest of the shots just weren't good photos (again, my bad), so I wasn't going to the frustrating effort of getting them into the holder properly.

I've got two more rolls of the Superia 200, and quite frankly, I'm not interested in putting them in the camera. If any of my film buddies wants to have a go, get in touch and we'll go for a walk. If you develop your own film, maybe there's special tricks to tame the curl. Or maybe you use the anti-Newton ring glass trick for digitizing. Get in touch, I'll give you a deal.

So what's the B photos, you ask? Those are Kodak Gold 200, shot on the GW690. Again, these are not meant to be a direct quality comparison. There's very little editing done to these photos, and nothing special done to her face. The red of the bridge is slightly more orange, but that might be an exposure thing, and could probably be tweaked in editing.

7A. Superia 200, then Kodak Gold 200.

7B.

8A.

8B. I'm still working on exposure, and happy when it works. What I should have done here is opened up the lens and gone for a faster shutter speed to blur out the tree blossoms a bit more. Live and learn.

9. One last shot with Kodak Gold 200 for today. If  you remember the May Image of the Month, here's another view of that space.

Ektar 100 in Canon 7 downtown, plus bonus

So that was a lot of film in a short time! I'd wanted to run some Ektar 100 through the Canon 7, and you'll see the downtown shots below. Then there was a roll of Fuji Superia 200 during the Ukrainian walk. About the same time a roll of Ektar 100 was in the GW690, then a roll of Kodak Gold 200. 

So there's lots of film to look at, which sort of leads to the question, what's the story to go along with them? Which get shown, in what order, and with which other photos? Decisions, decisions. Some people might choose to present them in chronological order, but that's actually really tough, since the film cameras don't date time stamp the photos.

So I'll start with the downtown Ektar 100. This film loves light and colour, so that's what I was looking for. The walk started at The Camera Store to pick up some odds and ends. 

1. The Husky towers, unless there's been some A&D activity and a new company has exerted their primal naming rights. 

2. This mural looks a bit faded in real life, but the film seems to bring some new vibrancy to it. The problem with murals is that often they face a parking lot, or other obstructions. Some might choose to edit all that out and present an idealized view of the mural. I choose to accept that the obstructions are part of the mural. Call me lazy if you must.

3. Part of the fun of using a rangefinder camera is not focussing before shooting. The idea is that you set a fairly closed f stop, and an acceptable shutter speed for the light and being hand held, then some markings on the lens will tell you the range of distances where everything is in focus. Aim at anything between those distances and you'll be good. People doing this get really good at estimating distances. I was doing a bit of his, and this is the best example. I was working on shooting some people on the ubiquitous scooters, when this rowdy pedal pub appeared from the other side of a big truck. Click.  

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9. As a bonus, Superia 200, after the Ukrainian walk.

10. And a bonus bonus, Kodak Gold 200, GW690, after the Ukrainian walk.

The other photos will appear here when I figure out a coherent story to go along with them. What do you have to look forward to? Flowers, landscapes, reflections, Ukrainians walking, Michelle, and Fish Creek. Some might appear in my other blog's 'Of the Day' section. Stay tuned!