You can see another image of Kim from this same session (I think) along with some of my other thoughts about film photography in this post: Does the Camera Make the Photographer or is it Vice Versa?
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t take more.”
“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.”
“Nobody asked your opinion,” said Alice.” ― Alice in Wonderland
Does it seem like we shoot more images when using DSLRs and mirrorless cameras during a photo session compared to when shooting film for a similar kind assignment or project?
During a typical model test shoot when I made the featured portrait, I would typically expose two rolls of 35mm film—one roll of black & white and one roll of color negative. Sometimes I would shoot a third roll and occasionally 24-exposure rolls, so during a model shoot it would consist of my making from 72 to 108 images.
When I began shooting a DSLR or mirrorless camera for these same kinds of model sessions, I made many more exposures. How many more? When photographing a talented model like Erin Valakari for example, I would typically shoot 300 or more images, almost three times as many as I would do during a film-based session.
So the question remains…
Is the quality of my photographs better now compared to when I was only shooting film? Is it possible that not having to worry about the cost of film and processing let me produce not only more photographs but better and faster images at the same time? I somewhat danced around this topic in my video Why Film, Why Now, which is live on my YouTube channel, Joe Farace’s Videos.
How I Made this Portrait: I photographed Kim in the living room of my former home using window light with (maybe) a reflector at camera left. The camera used was my original Contax 167MT, similar to the one I re-purchased from Japan via eBay, and a Carl Zeiss 85mm f/2.8 lens. Exposure of the Kodak color negative film was unrecorded. The film was scanned using Kodak’s Photo CD process and opened with Lemke Software’s GraphicConverter that produces fairly good quality files from a Photo CD disc but the software is not without quirks for people using older computers and OS.
So I asked some people that I know if they thought digital capture encourages them to produce more and better photographs. A former Shutterbug editor told me “it could be true. For model shoots I would expose three rolls of 120 film and two rolls of 35mm but with my DSLR I’ll make 600 shots! When working with digital, I tend to shoot faster and make shots I might have passed when shooting with film.”
One wedding photographer told me, “Thinking about the cost of film and processing eases my resistance to pressing the shutter.” Then he added, “at a wedding on Sunday I found myself holding back toward the end because I ran out of memory cards! So I went through all of the images, deleting a few that wouldn’t make the first edit.”
It seems that it’s not just on paid assignments where we shoot more digital frames than we would have shot with film in the past. Another part of any photo shoot, especially when working in the studio, is making tests to check exposure, much as we might have used Polaroid film in the past. So maybe a another question to ask might be: Is making all of these additional exposures adding premature wear and tear to our digital cameras, especially the shutters, than their film counterparts might have experienced? I don’t know for sure but it almost has to. Doesn’t it?
You can learn all of my tips, tools and techniques on shooting available light glamour photography in my book surprisingly titled Available Light Glamour Photography. Used copies of the book are available from Amazon for $25.86, as I write this. If you prefer a digital format, Kindle copies are $27.12.