Film?

[Not a Number]

Anybody but me still shooting with film?

Do you prefer slide or negatives?

What emulsions do you prefer?

Are you having difficulties finding films stock (especially the slower emulsions)?

Warren

[pinglover]

I still shoot with film at times. I like Fuji best because I find the greens to be richer. Kodak film seems to be best for photographing children. It seems to brings out nice skin tones for me.

***disclaimer***
I am beneath the level of a hobbyist with my photography skills. I use a point and click camera that has auto focus.

[BarryRice]

I use both, as film and digital both have their advantages and disadvantages.

When I use film for plant/landscape photography, I use Velvia exclusively. Velvia 100 is the standard, now that Velvia 50 has been deprecated. Fabulous saturation, great renderings of green. Look through most macro and outdoor photography books and you'll see that the masters of the art tend to use Velvia.

Meanwhile, my wife doesn't like Velvia because the extreme saturation is too much for her tastes. She uses Provia 100F, which is also quite nice. If I run out of Velvia, I'll scavenge from her Provia stock and not be too unhappy with the results.

These films should be stored in the refrigerator. If that's not your bag, Ektachrome should be used, it's a good film too.

Of course, with film you have to get it developed. I send my images to a high quality lab. You can buy mailers from companies like B&H or Adorama.

I don't know of any color photographers who work seriously with print film, by the way.

Digital offers joy instantaneously. However, to get best results you should shoot raw, then use adequate image massage software to get the best results. It is not quite possible, in my experience, to achieve the saturation of Velvia with digital detectors, although there are some software programs like "Digital Velvia" which do a fair job of faking it.

One interesting problem I have encountered with digital applies only to flash photography of Pinguicula. For some reason, the colors often come out really wrong, and I need to tweak the heck out of the color balance to get something even remotely correct. Two nights ago I was shooting Pinguicula primuliflora 'Rose' and it was coming out decidedly blue, while the flower is pink. Meanwhile, Joseph Clemens has a plant with an amazingly fabulous flower (I don't want to say more until he publishes) which has defied my attempts to render correctly. I'm still working on it.

When I'm in the field, I shoot my somewhat more casual shots on digital, but for really colorful shots I do film. For the really important images, I shoot both so that if something happens to the film image, I know I'll have a workable digital result.

By the way, I'm using SLR bodies so I can swap lenses back and forth between digital and film.

For my book (buy my book Bob), I used both digital and film.


Barry