Silver Halide and CCD’s (Film and Digital)

Another day of fog, this always sparks the creative juices in me. There is something special about looking for and taking pictures on foggy day. Often it is just the excitement of the search! There is a mysteriousness about a foggy day, you’re never aware of what you might come across. You need to be careful when you’re on the road and also when you’re taking pictures. You, or I, don’t want that special moment, event or shot to be missed.

    Today’s outing would be with an old Rolleiflex twin lens reflex camera. Lent to me by a friend, the camera was as old as me if not a year or two older. The camera had belonged to his father, it’s an heirloom, I needed to take extra good care of it! Jim was nice enough to lend it to me to take a few rolls through it and to experience how it works. Inside the camera was a brand new, unexposed roll of Ilford black and white film.

    A twin lens reflex camera differs from your standard single lens reflex camera by having two lenses, situated one above the other. One is used for focusing and the other to expose the film. To compose your picture, you look down into the top of the camera rather than through it horizontally. A lot of “street photographers” like this type of camera because it gives a bit of discretion when taking a picture, you aren’t actively watching the subject, you are looking downward towards the ground.

    My digital camera accompanied me also. The main goal was to take some film shots but the desire to see my work immediately was still present.

    With a film camera, the need to “think” about the picture is important. The Rolleiflex only takes 12 exposures for each roll. With only a limited amount of pictures you have to be more selective in what you are photographing. The picture format is square as compared to the rectangular shots we are all familiar with. This comes into play when composing your pictures.

    Another reason to carefully choose your shots is cost. You have to buy the rolls of film and then you need to get them developed, both of which involve cash. With our digital cameras or our smart phones, we can shoot all day until the memory is filled. There are no addition charges when taking pictures this way.

    With our phones, pictures can be taken and sent to friends or posted on-line minutes if not seconds after you’ve taken the shot. With film, time is involved. If you develop the negatives yourself, there is an hour or two until the negatives are dry enough to handle. Then they need scanned or printed, some more time that will pass until you can share those precious pictures. Though it may involve more time, there is that magic moment when you unroll the newly developed negatives and see your exposures for the first time. It is almost as exciting as watching a printed picture develop in the darkroom, slowly appearing under the red lights. It's the magic of light and chemistry!

    The time involved is a definite part of the enjoyment of film photography. Do you remember how exciting it was to come out of the drug store, or from the drive-up kiosk and then sit in the car and open up the envelope to look through the new batch of pictures?  Remembering back to when you took them, reliving the experiences and the places they were taken, and then sharing them with your friends. The anticipation is something we don’t experience much anymore with digital photography.

    In our digital world, we always have a camera near-by. Our phones are always at hand. The cameras in them are phenomenal! The pictures taken by smart phones are far superior to those taken by my digital camera. Still, I enjoy the feel of my cameras, whether film or digital. I’m not multi-tasking; I’m taking a picture with a tool which was made for just that!

    With the digital camera, if I make a mistake, I just take another shot. This morning, I knew I had moved the camera when I pushed the shutter release. I knew the picture would be blurred. I was forced to decide whether or not to take another one. Was it worth it? In the end, I reset the camera on a tripod and used the self timer to open the shutter. That exposure “should” be good.

What I was envisioning

    The whole process of taking pictures is like magic to me. Whether it is photons hitting a digital sensor or a strip of plastic covered with silver halide, each picture is exciting. Those miniscule pieces of time caught on film or on a memory card always mean something to the photographer. They are special whether it's a sunrise, a landscape, a wedding, a flower in the garden or a bird landing on a feeder. They are a memory and often, a treasure, especially if they turn out the way we had envisioned them.

    The morning was fun, as always. The roll is almost finished, there are three more shots to be taken, shots waiting for that special, decisive moment. That short amount of time I’ll want to save.

    Then comes the wait for the film to get developed and printed and then…I can relive those moments again!