In the Spirit – Keeping Film Alive

I have been trying to reduce (not eliminate, just make fewer) the number of film cameras that I keep on the shelves in my photo room. By the way, the photo room is not a darkroom, simply a spare bedroom that has shelves, and a closet dedicated to cameras and books about photography.

I have thinned the camera herd down to less than 24. That’s still too many and I have promised Kathy that I am not done. But, it’s getting harder and harder to get rid of the best of the rest. The problem is deciding which camera to take when I want to shoot some film.

I always have two to four cameras (medium format and 35mm) loaded with film and ready to go out and grab some pictures. In January it was the Leica M6 with Ilford black and white film and two weeks ago it was the Olympus OM-4T with Fuji Velvia color slide film. The images in this article are some of the pictures captured on film by the OM4T.

The slides were developed but not mounted. They come back from the lab in a string of 36 or 37 pictures. I cut them into short strips of 6 images and then scan with an Epson 750 film scanner at up 4000 dpi – roughly 45MB each. Then I bring the images into ON1, review them, edit if necessary and then export as jpegs. That’s what you see here.

Yes it is much easier to shoot digital. But, the process with film slows me down and gets me to focus on what I am doing. Its fun and the results are pretty good. Later in the week I will post some of the black and white photos from the Ilford roll that I shot in January. Film is still alive!