I'm going to subvert proper writing order in this post and put the conclusion first, because it demonstrates that this actually is a Film Friday post, which would otherwise not be obvious right away.
But first, a digression: TOP is written for practitioners—photographers—and takes their side, and champions their interests, and considers things from their point of view. I formulated this principle when I was a contributing editor of the old Darkroom Photography magazine, and the now-notorious Bob Shell, then of Shutterbug magazine, wrote me a scolding letter admonishing me that our job as photo magazine writers was to help manufacturers sell their products. Ever the contrarian, I decided right then and there that my principle would be to put readers first*. That's who I've served and written for and been loyal to ever since.
That was too long. Anyway: looked at from that perspective, it's important for film shooters in the mid-2020s to re-jigger the optimizing mindset, which I will describe below. The purpose and meaning of shooting film, and hence our approach to it, is radically different now since it has become an optional or even antiquarian pursuit. Many of the optimizing impulses of the old days and old ways have simply become unnecessary now. Just to name a few passions of advanced amateur photographers from the peak of the entirely pre-digital era:
- It was a mark of status to own the longest telephoto lens. But that was because long lenses were single-focal-length and had to cover 24x36mm, and were impressively large and impressively expensive. The guy with the biggest one won! But now, when sensors can be the size of a pinky fingernail, even this bridge camera of pedestrian appearance can be quite cheap and yet offer ridiculous telephoto reach equivalent to 1200mm on a 35mm camera! So there's no point now in sacrificing to own the biggest, um, protuberance for your film camera. You're not going to impress anybody. So give that a rest.
- Same thing with motor drives, in the days before they were built in and had to be bought as accessories. Gosh, guys with really big honking motor drives could shoot pictures at up to SIX FPS (frames per second). At some point the edge of the envelope was pushed even a little farther. Well, even some fairly ordinary digital cameras can shoot up to five or even ten times that. So if you're a film shooter now, you might not need an MD-4 motor drive for your old Nikon F3.
- Everybody wanted the fastest film speed (equivalent to ISO now), and would go to almost self-defeating lengths for bragging rights, using special developers and a technique called "pushing," whereby you'd underexpose the film and then overdevelop the hell out of it. It looked awful, if you want my opinion. Real Kool-Aid drinkers bragged of being able to shoot standard 400-speed films like Kodak Tri-X and Ilford HP-5 at E.I.s (E.I. stands for exposure index, and was the proper term for a shooting speed that departed from a film's official tested rating) up to E.I. 1600! Wow, impressive. I always hated pushing even then, because it made pictures look terrible, but even I could understand that sometimes people had to shoot in dimly lit gyms or dark alleys. But digital cameras now routinely offer ISOs that have to be denoted with absurd numbers like ISO 12,800 or even higher (we really should have switched back to an extended** DIN standard for sensor sensitivities, to avoid those silly huge numbers). So if you shoot film today, shoot at the ISOs that make your pictures look best. If you need to shoot the black cat in the coal mine, switch to your digital rig.
Well, I won't explain all of these at length. But a few more included the quest for the fastest lenses (pointless now, unless you like the bokeh); the finest-grain film developer for B&W (you're shooting film! It's okay for it to look like film); the sharpest film (phone snaps now are sharper than a lot of 35mm pictures); the sharpest lens (making an analog unsharp mask took up to two days in the 1990s when I published Howard Bond's how-to—now it can be done in seconds in Photoshop, and you have endless options for sharpening files); the smallest, lightest camera (that camera module on the back of your phone is a camera); the most expensive brands or marques with the best reputations; the quietest camera (electronic shutter is usually dead silent); etc.
You can of course do anything you want to, and if you've moved to buy a film Leica and hunt for the sharpest lens for it, knock yourself out. But I'd argue that very little of that optimization BS really matters much for film shooting now, and you might consider taking much of the accumulated advice from the past with a grain of salt the size of a salt lick. Go ahead and shoot with funky old cameras if you want to; use grainy films and enjoy the effect; buy a slower lens, it will be fast enough; lenses with faults and optical aberrations are characterful, not inferior; expose and develop for picture quality rather than bragging rights; you get the idea. Digital runs rings around film technically anyway, so, if you're going to shoot film, just go ahead and embrace it. That would be my advice. Celebrate its peccadilloes; enjoy its distinctive look. It's "slow photography" now, so all that anxious optimizing, all that status-seeking, all that mine-is-better-than-yours, can be left in the past.
The Optimizing Impulse
At age 58 I had a late-life fling with a woman I knew years earlier who had been my "dream girl" back in those earlier times. Getting to know her for real was not quite the picnic I had always imagined. I've told this story before so I'll be brief. Once, she was visiting me in my then-new-to-me house in Wisconsin, and there was a heavy snowfall overnight. We woke up to a gorgeous day, as often happens after snowstorms, with sunshine, exceptionally clear air, deep blue skies, and gorgeous clouds. My bedroom had a picture window that looked out over a large backyard, with rolling cornfields beyond a line of bare trees, all of which was covered with a blanket of lovely untouched fresh snow. I fixed tea for us and set up two chairs by the window, and she put on her robe and joined me. After a few sips of tea she asked to switch chairs. So we did. Then she asked to switch back. Curious, I asked what that was all about, and she looked thoughtful and said, "I have to have the best chair."
That's the optimizing impulse. When we have to make sure we have the best we can get, of whatever we can get.
I own a tube amplifier I no longer use. Tube amps as a category are obsolete as mainstream technology, but they're often favored by audiophiles who like the distinctive rich, dimensional sound they offer—I love 'em, myself. Mine isn't even a modern design (there really isn't any such thing, as most of the possible circuits have been pretty thoroughly explored), but mine doesn't even pretend to be the latest thing—it's an updated replica of a Dynaco Stereo 70, a highly popular mid-level amp introduced in 1959 that was sold mainly as a kit. The replica is all-new, made entirely with modern parts that are mostly higher-quality than were found in the original. I wrote about it quite a while ago, at this link. Scroll down for pics.
Not long ago I got an email out of the blue from a guy who had found that old post and wanted to know if I still had the amp and wanted to sell it. I did, and I did. But I told the guy I didn't want to go through the rigamarole of getting it out and setting it up and photographing it unless he was really sure he wanted it. He assured me that he absolutely was going to buy it. So I got the amp out of storage, unpacked it, and found the big box of old tubes I had for it. Made a list of all the tubes. He was enjoying the exchange and the anticipation, I'm sure, so he asked for more and more in the way of descriptions, pictures, information, and my opinion. A fair amount of time and work for me—you know how it is. It's what you have to do to make buyers happy.
Suddenly the lines of communication went dead. I sprang for most of the extras when I bought the amp, but it turned out the guy who built the amp and marketed it had started offering another little tweak as an option some time after I bought mine. My buyer had found out about this little extra (I don't even recall what it was), and had decided he had to have it. So the bargain we had already all but struck was dropped like the proverbial hot potato, with nary a word to me, and he went for the one that had the extra feature.
Had to be optimized! Never mind that it's a replica of an old amp from 1959. And was a mid-level bargain then and now. And is low power compared to similarly priced transistor amps. And doesn't take the most powerful, most accurate tubes (it uses EL34's, which I also love, although you can also "tube roll"—swap in—larger tubes). And it's already optimized, because all the cheaper parts from the original model were all upgraded in the replica—the transformers are bigger, the input board is revised, even the chassis is made from heavier and better stainless steel. So it's outdated technology that has low power that you only would buy in the first place because of its luscious, smooth, midrangey, full, rich sound—and thus already departs from technical accuracy in all kinds of ways.
But the guy had to have the best chair.
Anyway, I understand the optimizing impulse. It's common and rather natural. I do it. I'm sure a lot of us do. But it's often...sorry...really quite stupid. If you buy a modern version of an old 1950s steel-frame fat-tire cruiser bicycle, you don't need to remove the fenders to save weight. If you buy a new Ford Pinto for $2,021 in 1973, you don't need to pay $800 for a set of Pirelli racing tires that last only 10,000 miles (hi, Billy from high school). If you buy a budget Paul Reed Smith SE guitar built in Indonesia, you don't need to fret*** endlessly about whether you have the absolute best guitar strings for it, reading obsessively about strings and trying set after set in a Quixotic quest for the ultimate peace of mind. A pool cue is important to a pool player, but after about $400–$800, the more and more expensive ones just have better, more artistic decoration****.
There's not an exact, inflexible analogy to film photography here. But my recommendation is: if you're getting into film photography in 2025, choose carefully what you actually need to, and actually want to, optimize. Much of the hoary advice from the past that you will read and hear repeated all over everywhere is no longer actually relevant.
And if you want my advice as to what new film shooters might want to optimize these days, well, keep checking in here on Fridays. I'll get around to it eventually.
Mike
*Of course, one big result of that is that I am ignored by manufacturers, seldom receive embargoed announcements in advance, am almost never offered pre-production samples of upcoming new products so I can post a review on announcement day, and am never offered invitations to expenses-paid press junkets. You know what they say: Oh well. I'm okay with being independent. Make your bed, lie in it!
**Official DIN speeds only go up to DIN 39, which is ISO 6400.
***Did you like that one, Herman? :-)
****I believe the Empyrean sold for $35,000. Could be wrong.
Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)
Featured Comments from:
Hansen: "Your story about the amp sale ring very true to me and deserves a rant.
"In my experience would-be buyers of bargain or mid-level stuff can be some of the worst people to deal with, and it's one reason I don't even bother to sell inexpensive items most of the time. If hunting bargains on cheap stuff is what you do, then I don't want to hear from you. I'd rather throw things in the trash than waste my time.
"I once sold a cheap lens and the buyer cheated me out of the shipping, an inconsequential amount of money, but annoying nonetheless. Why did the guy degrade himself for pocket change?
"Putting lots of effort into providing more and more details and then being ghosted is a classic. I put a popular watch up for sale at a good price (a few hundred dollars) hoping to make a quick sale, and one person started the familiar process of requesting more info. Luckily a different buyer could recognize a bargain and snapped it up within hours.
"One man put up a 'wish to buy' ad, but then asked me to finance him. He didn't have the money ready.
"I suspect many of these 'buyers' just don't have the sufficient funds in the first place and just want to kick the tires a bit so they can tell themselves they got close to buying mid-tier item X."
James C. Chinn: "I am going in the opposite direction of optimization. I have been shooting digital for the last 20 years but recently went through my negatives and old prints and found the ones I had done with a Holga. I just can't replicate the dreamy look that camera provided with my Z7. Still have the Holga so I decided to order some rolls of HP5 and re-enter the world of film."
Jack Mac: "Optimization for film today is an enjoyable read. But did you take enough time to really optimize it?"
Mike replies: LOL. Probably not, no. Even if I take two days it's not enough time to rewrite the way I should.
Zyni: "I think this can be quite complicated. What I am going to describe has not yet happened to film photography because it is not yet 'alive' in the sense that large numbers of new film cameras are not being made, yet. But for guitars, yes, they are.
"The Fender Telecaster ('tele' below) is the most important electric guitar. It is important because it is (in its larval form which was not yet called a tele) the first electric guitar which did not try to look like an acoustic (or, in fact, a semi acoustic) guitar. If you look at a Gibson Les Paul, which was being developed concurrently with the tele, well, it is recognisably similar to, say, a Gibson ES-175, which is a semi. The tele is not: it is only itself. All later electric guitars which do not try to look like acoustic guitars have the tele to thank for this.
"It is a work of a genius. But the genius, Leo Fender, did not do this to invent the pure electric guitar: he did it to make it cheap. Bolted-on necks are cheap. The body is a simple, uncontoured, slab because that is cheap. The neck, originally, was a single bit of wood with no separate fingerboard made of nicer wood, because that is cheap (also it is not strong enough, so truss rods were added, but still many teles do not have a separate fingerboard). There are three bridge saddles, not six, because it's cheap. Everything is cheap.
"But all that cheapness made a fantastic noise, and is in fact a very flexible guitar.
"Well, I do not play a tele. But I know a man who does. And he had a choice: he could become a rich plutocrat and buy a real '50s tele. Or he could remain a human being and buy a replica. He bought a replica. And it is 'cheap' in all the ways the original instrument was cheap. But it was not cheap: it was not cheap because it is not enough, for instance, for the pickups to be cheap: they had to be 'cheap' in just exactly the ways that those original 1954 pickups were. Not cheap like the 1952 or 1961 pickups, which also were cheap but were not the same. And that kind of 'cheap' is expensive, because it requires taking to bits an old pickup and perhaps making the right wire and insulation and so on.
"Well it is not that expensive because it is a European guitar, not an American one (this is as well: today I look at my beautiful American semiacoustic and, knowing what so many Americans and American companies have made it so clear they think of women and minorities, of which I am both, I think perhaps I should sell it and buy a vintage Höfner). But it was not a cheap guitar.
"The world of guitar players is perhaps a more mature culture than the world of film photography: we understand as we have understood for a long time that what we want is not 'good' but 'right.' We'd like our teles not to hum like crazy, but if sounding like a tele means they must hum like crazy well, we will learn to stand far from the amp and face the right way so the hum is less. Because we want our teles to be right.
"So, yes, we optimize, but we optimize for 'right,' not 'good.' And I think film photography will become like this, if it is not already. Do people really want good lenses, or do they want a Cooke triplet which will be bad in all the right ways, and are people making very beautiful copies of those old lenses yet. I think they probably are, and if they are not they will be. Do people want good developers...or do they want Rodinal?
"So I believe that, already, film photographers are probably optimizing for 'right,' not 'good,' but they perhaps do not, yet, understand that this is what they are doing."
Richard Skoonberg: "Here is a 'best chair' story This is story from Tim Burkett when he was a student of the famous Zen master Shunyru Suzuki in San Francisco. Burkett was considering going to Japan to study Zen for a year and was trying to evaluate the most perfect Zendo (in this case, a monastery). He was doing a bit of 'comparison' shopping. When asked for advice, Suzuki pointed to a collection of Raku teacups, each handmade and unique. He said, 'If you try to pick and choose the best teacup, you will not appreciate any of them.'"
Mike replies: Thanks for that. Beautiful. Suzuki's book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was a big influence on my life.
Analogue Lamb: "Very interesting article. Nice start to the weekend. The way you describe it makes me think that digital has, in a sense, liberated analogue photography. Practitioners of traditional photography no longer have to chase the perfect. They can embrace the flaws. Flaws = character. Gone are the days of Leica versus Zeiss on CompuServe."
The "best" mentality is a probably partially a symptom of living in a hyper-consumerism society.
Posted by: Bob Rosinsky | Friday, 14 February 2025 at 12:46 PM
Lately I’ve found that the best way to evaluate/choose a film/developer combination is to just look at photographs (albeit mostly online, which is not always completely reliable) and make a choice based on what pleases or appeals to you most.
Several years ago I became enchanted by the work of Steve Star who goes by “Stig of the Dump” on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/stig_ofthedump?igsh=MWs2cWswa3g3ZG41Yg==) and other social media sites. Steve lives in the Liverpool, UK area (surprise - he’s a big Beatles fan!) and took up photography somewhat late in life.
He mostly uses Ilford Delta films and processes in D23. No longer available from Kodak, Steve mixes his own. The results with the Delta films (as well as others from time to time) is magical to me.
Once I start shooting again (I need “good” weather to accomplish what I want) I’ll be experimenting with D23 and a few film stocks to develop my own recipe and approach.
The Tessar design f3.5 lens on my Rolleiflex Automat is plenty fast enough and I love the look it gives. I also recently acquired a Meopta Flexaret VII kit (with, I believe, ALL available accessories!) and once I have mastered my approach with the Rollei I’ll see how that miracle Czech technology and Meopta Tessar version works. I may end up shooting one camera with ISO 100 film and one with 400. To all the digital settings and infinite combinations - screw that!
Posted by: Earl Dunbar | Friday, 14 February 2025 at 02:05 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong (it's been a while), but scanners do a great job reading thin (i.e. underexposed and/or underdeveloped) negatives and have a tough time with the opposite, so, at least for the hybrid process types, there's one more reason not to push film. You'll want to optimize for your specific materials and needs, of course ;)
Posted by: robert e | Friday, 14 February 2025 at 02:41 PM
. . . she looked thoughtful and said, "I have to have the best chair."
I have Lost Love, your print showing your woman gazing at waves breaking on a shore. I may be that way too. I used to do a lot of camping in National Forests; I could never come to rest until I had selected the best of all the available campsites. Same with motel rooms, or apartments. Chairs, not so much. I realize this is not normal, but it is a quirk I would not willingly give up.
Posted by: Allan Ostling | Friday, 14 February 2025 at 02:43 PM
The lens is the heart of the camera and every lens has a unique fingerprint. The ones that don't cost much are often the ones that take and make the nicest photos.
I am currently photographing with the Jupiter-9 (85mm/f2, circa 1958) - which is a copy of the Zeiss Biotar - and takes the most flattering of portraits and highlights glow at f2.8.
Agree with you about protuberances. They are for the birds.
Posted by: Dan Khong | Friday, 14 February 2025 at 03:20 PM
Interesting post. Two things I want to mention. First, the discussion of the Dynaco Stereo 70 took me right back to 1974. I was a freshman electrical engineering student at UT Austin. I was on a very fixed budget but a big fan (at the time) of audio equipment and was also dating a concert cellist. I auditioned a bunch of pre-amp and amplifier combinations at various audio shops and couldn't scrounge up even a small percentage of the budget required for the amps I liked the sound of. I bought a Dynaco Stereo 120 amp kit, got out my soldering iron and got to work. The Stereo 120 was Dynaco's first transistor stereo amp and they had previously vowed not to abandon tube amps until they were able to to design a solid state amp that sounded as good or better. I believed that the 120 was that model. I paired it with a set of AR3a speakers and loved the combination. The 120 was the first amp I'd listened to that smoothed out the AR3as and made them highly listenable. It was the first amp I heard that handled 4 ohm speakers well. A wonderful memory. Even down to the Dual turntable, etc.
Thanks for that. Great memories of the time.
Now, a repeating bone to pick, in general, about the perception of film photographers from the past mostly desiring ways to make their black and white films and color films attain decent performance at higher ASAs (let's be time period correct there) by using faster films and creative developers. While this was most probably true for editorial photographers and photojournalists everyone I knew and worked with was in the commercial advertising sector or the portrait sector of professional photography and their goals were to discover the ultimate fine grained films and fine grained developers. For the advertising people it was all about providing clients with prints that had the highest detail with the least objectionable grain and a long tonal scale. For portraitists it was all about delivering the same but with the additional benefit of softer, more flattering skin tones. I spent about 25 years shooting, developing and printing mostly Tri-X film stock across 35mm and 6x6 formats and almost always shot them at their rated ASAs and developed in Kodak D-76 at pretty much exactly Kodak's recommendations for time and temperature. We made a lot of money delivering prints to magazines and advertising clients which, in addition to having the content they requested, also were fine grained, sharp and had just the right contrast. In some ways I think seeing photographers' choices from only one angle, or in one demographic, gives writers a blind spot to what a great many of the day in and day out professionals (outside of photojournalism) were doing with their processes and methodologies. And what their targets were.
In academic circles, what I observed as a lecturer at the University of Texas Austin, in the Fine Arts College, was most students and nearly all the faculty members were working with either Ilford fp4 or Kodak Tri-X and the prevailing method in and around 1980-1984 was to "rate" your black and white film one stop slower (over expose by one stop) than the "box" rating and then compensate by developing the film for 20% less time than the recommended time.
So, from fine arts/academic photographers through commercial workers, the struggle I always saw was the pursuit of less obvious grain and commensurate higher detail and resolution by using medium speed and slower films and "pulling" development.
Even today, when I talk to working professionals in those niches, the talk is never about super high ISOs in cameras but just how wonderful files look when the digital cameras are shot at their base ISOs. I take advantage of every opportunity I can to shoot at ISO 50 on a Leica SL2. It looks so great...
Anyway, that's my take. Thanks for the wonderful memories of the Dynaco gear. Back in the day playing the latest Joni Mitchell vinyl release on a great stereo system was dating magic.... YMMV (or, your playlist may vary YPMV).
Posted by: Kirk | Friday, 14 February 2025 at 03:25 PM
You’re correct Mike. I do most of my photography with a meterless Nikon F2 and three lenses. I’m always thinking of upgrading, but will an upgrade help me take better pictures? The answer is almost certainly no. The bicycle analogy is apt for me, as an aging cyclist. Electronic shifting, ceramic bearings, carbon fiber rims: some of my riding pals have them. But would they make my cycling more enjoyable? Nope.
Posted by: Mark B | Friday, 14 February 2025 at 03:54 PM
"The purpose and meaning of shooting film, and hence our approach to it, is radically different now since it has become an optional or even antiquarian pursuit."
Well, yes and no. Film is basically the same as it's been for years. If you have a 1/1000 sec. top shutter speed, you'll need that slower, sharper film if you don't want to use a neutral density filter over the lens on a sunny day.
Yes, digital will look just as good as the slower film if properly exposed. (Well, Tech Pan would have given digital a good run for its money.)
A fast lens will still make focusing easier with a film camera. An f/1.4 lens won't be that much easier to focus than an f/1.7 lens, so nothing has changed there, but compared to an f/2.8 lens, it'll be slightly easier to determine the exact focus.
Digital cameras don't show the exact view that you would get from a lens faster than f/2.8 anyhow. (I read that in one of Ken Rockwell's articles. I tried my Super Takumar f/1.4 with adapter on my K1 II and darned if he wasn't right.) I don't know if that applies to every single make, so feel free to show examples.
I pretty much agree with everything else in your post.
High ISO values of the digital cameras are great in themselves, but the ability to change the ISO for each photo sure beats having the wrong film speed in the camera during changing light conditions. Heck; sitting for a sunset, then taking some photos as the sky slowly dims, make the variable ISO setting very valuable.
I'll bet you get a bunch of comments to this post.
Posted by: Dave | Friday, 14 February 2025 at 04:21 PM
Our present capitalist societies are founded upon wants superseding needs, which is mostly but not always harmless.
Posted by: Bear. | Friday, 14 February 2025 at 07:41 PM
Regarding motor drives, I remember reading in one of the dozen photo mags that I bought every month, in an article which featured some impressive sports photography, where the shooter took offense at the thought that his images were simply based on aiming and letting the motor drive blast through the film in seconds.
The photographer stated some basic math to counter that thought. If you are shooting at 1/1000th of a second, and your motor drive can give 5 FPS, in one second you have captured 5/1000th of that second. But you missed 995/1000th of that same second. With the perfect timing of his photos, it was obvious that he wasn't relying on the motor to get his shots in a spray and prey blast.
That article made me more discerning with my 36 exposures, and I put all my motor drives on single shot and basically used them as a electronic thumb.
Posted by: Albert Smith | Friday, 14 February 2025 at 07:57 PM
This is totally unrelated to today’s post, but since it’s Film Friday I thought I’d share this link to a photo-essay in The Guardian about a gentleman creating platinum palladium prints in the UK, leveraging both digital and analogue methods.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2025/feb/14/artisan-platinum-printer-craft-in-pictures
Posted by: Peter Conway | Friday, 14 February 2025 at 10:48 PM
Actually, it's amazing how different guitar strings can sound. I didn't think it made much difference until I put my usual brand of guitar strings on a new to me guitar and it didn't sound at all like what it did with the strings it came with. I drove back to the store, found out what the store strings were, and bought a bunch.
Posted by: hugh crawford | Saturday, 15 February 2025 at 02:34 AM
Put that way, a half-frame film camera makes sense. I'm not making fun, I agree with you.
I've been scanning some Ilford negatives from 1974 that I processed myself. I digi-scanned them using an Olympus m4/3s camera, so I'm not a purist, and I'm getting sepia toned scans. I have to "convert" them to B&W. This means I've lived long enough to produce my own sepia-toned negatives naturally.
I know the tone is coming from the negatives and not a faulty workflow because I've digi-scanned recent FP4 negatives and they're actually B&W.
(Style question: I use "digi-scan" to mean scan by digital camera, as opposed to dedicated film or flatbed scanner. Is this commonly accepted?)
Posted by: Robert Roaldi | Saturday, 15 February 2025 at 07:10 AM
Loved this post. I'm guilty! But for me it was never tele lenses or motor drives, or Leicas. My optimization was film size---I disdain 35mm to this day, and digital is far, far superior to it unless you desire its defects, which is what they are.
No, I quickly tried 6x6, and then jumped to 4x5. But I soon found out that my very pretty field camera really crimped my style to a degree I hadn't anticipated---I had optimized myself into a corner!
So, I then "settled" on a Fuji 6x9. And I found my great love in film photography, and my work got much better, too! But I had the sin of photo gear snobbery---it was larger medium format (not even 645!) or else you were shooting poor stuff no matter what brand it was. So, from then on it wasn't those tele lenses that impressed but whether someone had a Hassy, or a Plaubel, or etc. And the "oooo's" started when I spotted a Mamiya 7. We're all funny creatures.
Posted by: Tex Andrews | Saturday, 15 February 2025 at 11:25 AM
...Of course, one big result of that is that I am ignored by manufacturers, seldom receive embargoed announcements in advance, am almost never offered pre-production samples of upcoming new products so I can post a review on announcement day, and am never offered invitations to expenses-paid press junkets...
Not being in a Virginia prison for 35 years makes you better off than the person who admonished you. Failing to be a shill for photography manufacturers is far preferable to committing involuntary manslaughter.
Posted by: Sal Santamaura | Saturday, 15 February 2025 at 01:33 PM
When I was in college in 1972, I worked for a while at a store selling audio equipment. We sold a decent assortment of solid affordable equipment as well as high end expensive gear (MacIntosh, Marantz, Crown, Kilpsh, etc.. when they were still independent audiophile manufacturers). I observed then that the curve describing the relationship between cost and improvement in sound quality was not a straight line, but rather it had a steep initial portion (so you got a much better stereo for 400 1972 dollars than 200, then had a less steep slope in the mid portion (each dollar spent between $400 and $2000 or so got you more quality), and then it became very steep from $2000 and up, almost logarithmic. In the last portion of the curve you would need to spend an extra 50% to get another 5% increase in sound quality. I endeavored to sell people stereos at whatever level they could afford, but mostly in that linear mid-portion of the curve where you pretty much got what you paid for if you invested more money. But, some people absolutely had to "have the best chair", which was good for my commission, so....
I have observed this phenomenon to be mostly true for most of the gear related purchases I have made through the years, be they cameras, audio, cars, computers and related gear, clothing, furniture, etc..
By the way, during my youth a built a few Dynaco amps from kits. It was a lot of fun.
Posted by: Steve Rosenblum | Saturday, 15 February 2025 at 03:59 PM
If I were to return to film I'd think really hard about 2.5 or 645 or 67 somethin like that. Of course it matters what you're going to point the camera at.
Posted by: Dennis | Saturday, 15 February 2025 at 04:06 PM
Are you trying to tell me that my K1000 with the Pentax-M 50/2 and roll of Tri-X is probably good enough to get the shot?
Posted by: DANIEL STEVENSON | Saturday, 15 February 2025 at 04:29 PM
Switching chairs so that she could get the better of the two was a red flag.
[Not only that, the first time we broke up it was because there were spots on the toilet rim. She said we were too different, and my house was too messy, and when I protested that it wasn't messy at all (I had just moved in a couple of months prior) she pulled me into the bathroom to show me the toilet. There might have been spots on the toilet rim, but that was before I got my new cornea and I couldn't see well enough to detect them. (I wore glasses corrected to 20" to look at books and photos and the computer screen, but I had never put on my glasses to inspect the toilet bowl from 20" away, I'll admit it.)
Seems funny now. --Mike]
Posted by: Dan Khong | Saturday, 15 February 2025 at 06:14 PM
Solely a personal compliment: I have no hesitation in saying that you are simply the most enjoyable writer, photography focused (Herman would not be impressed) generalist, that I currently read.
I'd have to assume quite the ego to suggest this is a particularly meaningful compliment, but it's meaningful to me. I'll adopt an abbreviation here: FWIW.
[Thank you very much Nikhil! That's quite a lovely compliment and it made my day. --Mike]
Posted by: Nikhil Ramkarran | Sunday, 16 February 2025 at 06:15 AM
Of course, avoiding over-optimization isn’t just a good practice for film photography. As you’ve rightfully reminded us, digital photography has passed the point of sufficiency long ago, so that “buying new stuff to make better pictures” (as opposed to other reasons for buying stuff) is often self-delusion. Yes, I delude myself from time to time!
I kind of wish that manufacturers working in mature product categories would offer a “last one you’ll need” line - full featured but without the gimmicks, durable and repairable, supported for decades. Such products would be expensive upfront but lower cost in the long run.
Then they could put their R&D resources towards bigger innovative leaps and truly new products.
I know, I know….that’s not how it works (with a few rare exceptions). But I can dream!
Posted by: Lorenzo Dunn | Sunday, 16 February 2025 at 12:08 PM
Thank you for the story about the snow and the chairs; it is worthy of Chekhov. The "I have to have the best chair" attitude (which you interpret benevolently here) is completely puzzling to me: how come? How are you entitled to the best chair? Why wouldn't you want your company to have the best chair? -- I would like to know whether this is a difference between American and European culture... or if it is just a very special person.
[I said in the first draft that if one chair had been better than the other, I would have given it to her in the first place, but it sounded a little self-serving so I cut it. But it's true. Then again, I'm not picky about chairs. --Mike]
Posted by: Neven Jovanovic | Sunday, 16 February 2025 at 03:43 PM
I must admit not being much of a compulsive optimizer for most things, in fact in most cases it is counterproductive. One attempt was buying a custom sound system for a new car I had just bought that came with only an am radio. I went to a local specialist that advertised heavily on the radio. They had a system where you could switch between different setups that were arranged by ever increasing prices. Long story short I ended up buying the cheapest one, the next several upgrades sounded the same to me!
Oh and my answer to your friend would have been to hand her the toilet brush and say well this area will have to be your responsibility then.
Posted by: Terry Letton | Monday, 17 February 2025 at 11:20 AM
As Mr Dunn suggested, ""last one you’ll need” line - full featured but without the gimmicks, durable and repairable, supported for decades." That sounds like the Leica M film cameras, still in production.
Posted by: Kodachromeguy | Monday, 17 February 2025 at 12:40 PM