Thread: Shoot film to become a better photographer

I guess this is advice for people like me who have never shot meaningfully on film.

Jay Sousa: Shoot film to become better - Jay Sousa -- The Rangefinder - MercedSun-Star.com

cool.....he totally let me off the hook with his last sentence.

Simply covering up the LCD is no substitute for shooting with a manual film camera. There are things to be learned about exposure and selective focus that exceed simply covering up the LCD and waiting until loading the card into a computer.

Originally Posted by Luke

cool.....he totally let me off the hook with his last sentence.

Gaffer tape. Here I come.

Originally Posted by Brian

Simply covering up the LCD is no substitute for shooting with a manual film camera. There are things to be learned about exposure and selective focus that exceed simply covering up the LCD and waiting until loading the card into a computer.

It's a start though, isn't it? Having a few missed underexposed shots would be good for the soul.

I get the discipline aspect of film. I am definitely guilty of overshooting when I go out, and then I need to cull through a bunch of images when I get home. I think it is probably good to focus a bit more, shoot less and concentrate on composition. I will try to be more disciplined!

That said.... I do think digital and liveview has accelerated my photography learning process. Seeing how the liveview image changed, when I adjusted exposure, for example, helped things click for me. Yeah, some say instant gratification, but I say instant feedback (hey, dummy, that is not going to work!).

The other thing is that I am not able to judge what images are keepers from looking at the camera display in the field. More than a few times I have imported into LR at home and images I thought were suspect when I took them, turned out rather well when I see them on a larger display (okay, the opposite probably happens much more often).

It probably depends on where you are on the photographic learning spectrum, but for where I am right now, I think digital is better for me as far as learning goes.

He actually has a lot of good points but you don't need to shoot film to learn how to shoot properly. People just tend to get complacent with digital. Digital images are 'free' you don't have to pay for each exposure like you do film. There are more available shots and there is less concern over exposure because one can take many photos and generally something will be workable. And of course he's right that you can miss a lot if you keep peeking at your lcd when you should be watching what is going on in front of you be it a wedding shoot or a street shoot. Also regarding the chimping, I can't tell you how many times I thought I got a shot right only to come home and find that a back lit lcd made garbage look awesome and it was actually unusably underexposed or blurred because the lcd can't show you the resolution your computer monitor can. Film, can help a person to slow down and think-- if they are prone to laziness but otherwise just being a bit conscientious should do the trick.

Adding: turn off live view [if you have a viewfinder] or at least review, and just set to see histogram and exposure settings while you are shooting so even if you look back there you have tools but not photo gratification.

I lean on my signature block in reply

Film tends to be more forgiving for missed exposures than Digital. I have several older Digital cameras that do not have LCD screens on them. I have missed exposures, especially in IR.

Could have sworn I had posted in this thread. I tend these days (now that I am well over the first flush of burst mode) to only shoot minimally... by that, I mean I shoot something and move on. I may try different exposures for whatever it is but I dont spend much time "chimping" because I can check exposures etc when I get home, to see what worked and what didnt. The one thing I NEVER remembered to do when I was shooting film, was to write down what exposures I used... so replicating a particularly successful shot in terms of exp was very much a hit and miss affair. My film cameras (until the Pentax compact I took to the US with me 16 years ago) were all fully manual, and I loved that. I think thats why I like the X100 so much. It brings back some of that.