The Backlash

I’m at Ivey, our local professional lab, sorting film at a light table. Another photographer is doing the same next to me. "You shooting digital yet?" he asks me. "Yea but this client specifically asked for film" "Same here. Something about wanting to run it big."

I think we’re due for a backlash. Yesterday I got a call at 9 in the morning, asking if I was available for a shoot later that day. I quoted a price, they responded with one for half as much, we settled in the middle. "We don’t want digital. We want this on transparency," they said, more than once. I imagine that they have been burned in the past.

Two hours later I’m on a construction site by the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, photographing a steamroller. A Sakai GW 750, to be specific. I’m using my old camera and lenses. There’s no blink in the corner of my eye from the LCD. I hear a real film advance. It’s a bright, sunny day and I’m worried that the contrast is too great for the slow Ektachrome that I’m using. But I am grateful that, in less than 24 hours, I’m going to have the film sleeved and in a FedEx envelope, and I’ll be done. No post processing of RAW files. No two days in front of a monitor cleaning up images. The job is shot, and it’s out of here.

Comments

[Christian]

Hold on, if there is nothing to clean up on the film why would there be anythign to clean up on the digital files? It's not that the film has nothing to clean up, it's just that the tools don't make it as easy at this point in the process, but somene will be cleaning it up once it's scanned. Really you are just passing the buck, doing your own post processing versus letting someone at a color house do it. I don't think one way is right or wrong but there is no differencce, the work will be done. But shooting cleanly should make post processing a pretty minamal task, I still can't figure out where people lose hours per image doing post processing before they know the use and type of press or printer they are going to hit.
Christian

[Christian]

Hold on, if there is nothing to clean up on the film why would there be anythign to clean up on the digital files? It's not that the film has nothing to clean up, it's just that the tools don't make it as easy at this point in the process, but somene will be cleaning it up once it's scanned. Really you are just passing the buck, doing your own post processing versus letting someone at a color house do it. I don't think one way is right or wrong but there is no differencce, the work will be done. But shooting cleanly should make post processing a pretty minamal task, I still can't figure out where people lose hours per image doing post processing before they know the use and type of press or printer they are going to hit.
Christian