thumbs up © Lilly Schwartz 2012

I’m posting another film scan today. The picture was taken at the RAW temple in Friedrichshain a while back. I like all the colours and the retro feel the sprocket holes give the picture. Although the camera is old the image quality produced is rather nice, as long as the pictures are correctly exposed and properly focused.

My dad asked me yesterday whether taking pictures on film only to scan them afterwards isn’t a little pointless. After all it would be much simpler to just take pictures with my DSLR. Well, obviously he’s right, but I think there is much to be learned from analog photography. I think DSLRs make photography almost a little too simple. You don’t need to plan, often you don’t need to frame correctly, expose correctly or think about the lighting conditions. Your camera does all the thinking for you and even if you shoot manually there is no need to really think about any of this beforehand, because you can just take the picture again if your settings were off. I think shooting analog is a huge learning opportunity and ultimately I also would like to learn how to develop my own film and move on to different film formats, different techniques and so on. Interestingly enough it to me it seems to be the logical next step to move on to analog photography.

I’m still wondering about my workflow with film. Should I get the films developed in a proper lab or is a big lab enough for my level of skill? I hate how they cut through some of my negatives though. Should I scan all my negatives or only the really good ones? Should I bother with dust and scratch removal? Well, I’m still learning, still adjusting, so there is much to learn and to fine tune.