In my viewfinder
by Photo Editor
TAKING A STEP BACK
I always felt fortunate to be able to learn how to shot photos with film. When I first got started, digital was just coming out and affording any kind of digital camera was out of the question.
In high school I found myself in the darkroom starting with small pinhole cameras made out of film containers and eventually getting my own film camera which I still have today.
Shooting with film helped shape me into the shooter I am today. Of most of the photographers I know who didn’t start with film, I tend to shoot a good amount less than them. I feel as I am more patient with my shots and get more from every frame. That might be true or not, and I surely am not always getting the best photo, but that’s how I feel.
I keep hearing there is no such thing as waste with digital, and while that may be true to an extent, how much time are you wasting going through your 10,000 images from the football game? How much of a feel are getting of the scene shooting 10 frames a second? It’s probably just me and my style of shooting.
But to get to the point, I found some old Nikon film cameras, more specifically the F5, and am getting back to my roots. I’ve felt kind of dry as a photographer lately and going back to where it all started for me could be just the right thing. I’ll have something like 36 images on good ol’ Tri X, that may or may not be bad. We’ll see how it turns out.
Comments
10,000 photos from a football game? A bit exaggerated there?
As a sports shooter, I average about 150-300 photos per game with my 4.5FPS D90.
Editing through that number is quite fast. I go through all the images, taking no longer than 1-2 seconds per image, and delete all of the bad ones or ones that are not worthy of running in the paper, the SSU Star. That narrows me down to about 10 images real quick. The longest part of the process is waiting for the files to import into Aperture.
As a self taught photographer over the last 2.5 years, I’m glad I’m around for digital. It allows me to experiment freely and see my results instantly. That’s something I feel is important and lacking from film-only days.