An interesting experiment...

[Tronhard]

I have often admitted that learning photography in the film era defined my habits in that I try to take quite a bit of care before pressing the shutter button, take few images and perform less PP than many of my digital-native fellow-photographers. In this DPReview video and article two photographers explore the differences in challenges, technique and results between film and digital photography...
https://www.dpreview.com/videos/6185...raphy-shootout
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[george013]

I have often admitted that learning photography in the film era defined my habits in that I try to take quite a bit of care before pressing the shutter button, take few images and perform less PP than many of my digital-native fellow-photographers. In this DPReview video and article two photographers explore the differences in challenges, technique and results between film and digital photography...
https://www.dpreview.com/videos/6185...raphy-shootout

Interesting. I always want to compare digital and film. What I see in this film is that the digital is some sharper, but also to sharp. It kills the feeling. And the digital have a reddish colorcast. When I compare the pictures with what I see in the youtube movie the digital is far beside what I see.

George

[tbob]

My shooting style would be a bit of a mix. I compose quite carefully, well as much as I am capable of, and use the playback review to assess overall depth of field/focal point and exposure. May end up taking one or two of each composition once I have it dialed in, rarely more than three. I too learned on film, so I suppose that bias shows.

I sympathized with the one shooting the film. I do not miss the stress and anxiety of waiting for the shots to come back. Or the financial strain Those are why I shoot digital

[DanK]

It may be an interesting description of how those two photographers approached the shoot using the two media, but as a test of what the two media can produce, it seems uninformative to me. What I would want is a minimal contrast: a comparison that holds everything constant other than the medium.

I shot only film for decades, so I was used to planning more and shooting much less. My response to digital is like Trevor's. I still try to plan, and I know from experience that I usually take far fewer shots than some other folks. (That's one reason I never use a battery grip: I rarely need more than a single battery.) But it seems to me that it would be just plain silly not to take advantage of the fact that digital is free. I reshoot a great deal based on chimping, and I often take multiple shots when I simply can't visualize well enough which I will end up wanting. Why not? And in some kinds of photography, that is virtually a necessity. In particular, when I do bug macros, I know that I will miss either focus or the intended composition much of the time--the critters move, the flowers they are on move, and it is extremely touch to catch the tiny point of focus while moving the camera. In that extreme case, it's not unusual for me to end up with one or two keepers--sometimes, none at all--from scores of shots. I remember one in particular, a green native bee on an echinacea waving in the wind--that required more than 40 tries.

[rpcrowe]

In reality, the cost of film was cheap in comparison with the other associated costs of a shoot; such as the cost of talent, and the associated costs of running a studio and/or the transportation and ancillary costs of a location shoot...

Being frugal with film such as taking only one shot from each vantage point was IMO false economy. This is especially true when shooting talent. The models eyes could shift just a tiny bit and ruin the shot or give you a far better look. Just the slightest tilt of the head one way or another could make or break an image.

I used to shoot with the Pentax 6x7 but unless you had a lens with a leaf shutter (which I did not) you were constrained to 1/60 second sync speed for flash. That virtually eliminated using fill flash outdoors. One of the photographers who worked for me ruined an entire shoot because he tried to shoot with fill flash outdoors at 1/60 second. The result was an entire roll with ghost images. The ambient light provided the majority of the exposure while the flash gave a ghost image.

Lots of photographers liked the 6x7 Pentax because it was very much like shooting a 35mm SLR

Shooting medium format, I far preferred a Hasselblad with a leaf shutter. The Graflex XL was another nice medium format camera which used a leaf shutter and therefore could sync at its entire range of shutter speeds. It was a rangefinder and was a very fast camera to operate and great for event photography.

http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Graflex_XL

You could use a large variety of film types: 120, 220, 70mm in magazines which were really fast to load (they also allowed you to change film in mid roll without wasting any exposures), cut film and Polaroid. The lenses were excellent. My Graflex XL was equipped with Schneider lenses and could flash sync at 1/500 second. No HSS needed

This camera basically replaced the 4x5 Speed Graphic in my photo lab...

National Geographic photographers were very liberal in their use of film.

https://digital-photography-school.c...-photographer/

“A photographer shoots 20,000 to 60,000 images on assignment. Of those, perhaps a dozen will see the published light of day”

A National Geographic photographer first introduced me to exposure bracketing. At the time, I could only gasp at the cost of bracketing 35mm Kodachrome as well as the total film costs of their assignments. However, totaling the transportation, lodging costs, etc, of an assignment; the film costs were not that far out of reason. This was especially true since National Geographic did the film processing in-house!

[Manfred M]

+1 to Dan's comments.

The results say far more about the two photographer's approaches and style rather what the video purports to be about. Throwing B&W film into the mix just muddies things up even more.

A side by side shoot, by the same photographer, where the only difference is the camera body and film would have been a more meaningful approach.

The title of the article certainly captured my attention, but once I saw the approach and the commentary, I would suggest the article / video are quite misleading.

[Tronhard]

I agree that as close to an identical shoot by each method would have been interesting. What I took away was the reaction of the digital photographer when her camera was blanked out and became essentially a film camera from the point of view of user interface.

How one dealt with taking multiple shots in the film era depended very much upon the circumstances of what one was doing and where one was. In Richard's scenario of studio photography I would have take as many shots as I felt ensured the appropriate result, given the cost of the shoot setup and model. For me, I had a backpack and a camera bag with two bodies and four lenses and I would be in the middle of nowhere shooting, sometimes for a month or more at a time. Taking lots of shots was a luxury because I had access to a limited supply of film, yet it could be weeks before I would see the output once I got back to civilization and managed to get my film processed. So the conundrum was: do I take lots of shots here to ensure I get the right one, when I may run out of film later when something fantastic comes along? That constant tension made me plan to be frugal with my shots so that I maximized my success rates.

I had just done a shoot for a travel company, going right around NZ. I was heading for Australia to do another one there and I took the film to a processing studio in Christchurch to get them all produced so I could look at the slides on the flight over. They got their temperatures wrong and ruined the whole lot. When I went to pick them up they just handed me the equivalent number of blank films with a rather cursory "sorry". So I changed my flights and re-did the whole thing.

So digital is in those respects a much less stressful medium to shoot in as far as I am concerned, yet those old habits still remain for me!

[Manfred M]

As for the method I mentioned, it is good experimental methodology is to only change one variable at a time. If more than one variable changes, it is impossible to understand the impact of changing each of those variables. This is how anyone with a technical background will approach this type of study.

[Tronhard]

As for the method I mentioned, it is good experimental methodology is to only change one variable at a time. If more than one variable changes, it is impossible to understand the impact of changing each of those variables. This is how anyone with a technical background will approach this type of study.

Absolutely, the scientific method you are referring to is the only sure way to establish variables' impact on a result. Watching the debates on DPREVIEW I have left them to squabble over whether they think that film is better than digital or vice versa... My only real take-away was the change in behaviour when the real time abilities to see results and take unlimited shots were taken away...

[Manfred M]

My only real take-away was the change in behaviour when the real time abilities to see results and take unlimited shots were taken away...

We have a solution:

https://us.leica-camera.com/Photogra...ca-M/Leica-M-D

No rear screen. Outfit it with a small memory card and you can have your wish, but only if you are a rich purist....

[Tronhard]

We have a solution:

https://us.leica-camera.com/Photogra...ca-M/Leica-M-D

No rear screen. Outfit it with a small memory card and you can have your wish, but only if you are a rich purist....

I'm good thanks!

I am happy with my conservative approach and now that I have a Nikon Df, I can relive the feeling of occasion when taking a photo!
https://www.dpreview.com/products/ni...ikon_df/review