Tuesday 20 January 2009

New Work Flow

Ricoh GR Digital

I don't want to print all I've taken on film, especially during the time I'm yet to have enough skill and experience on the medium. I have thought about setting up my own darkroom but my home is not big enough for that. I then decided to work like those film photographers in the early stage of digital photography. Combining the analogue and digital ways, I shoot on film, have it processed, scan it with my newly bought scanner, Canon CanoScan 8800F, and do post-processing if needed.

I tried the scanner with the bundled software and a renowned third-party software called VueScan. Although the latter is more flexible with more setting options, I prefer the former for convenience and satisfactory result. Of course, the quality can't be compared to professional film scanners but it's still usable and actually good enough for posting on web or sharing via email.

Again I took pictures with GR21 today. Like yesterday, nothing from it yet...

For keen photo bloggers, film is really not a good medium. :P

(This should be my entry yesterday. I was too busy to do it...)
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5 comments:

  1. Cristian20 January 2009 at 15:34

    Agree with you about film not being a medium for photo bloggers ;).
    I have thought of buying a cheap film scanner since I have been very disapointed with the prints I got back.
    Looking forward to read morer about your experience with film and see your pictures.

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  2. Tom20 January 2009 at 23:57

    Hi Mike,

    I was considering how to use film and also considered a scanner. Turns out the kind of scanners i would get hold of would probably not do justice to the camera. Last weekend at a photo tradeshow we found some pretty reasonable prices for some developing and high quality scans to CD. I have the prices at home but it definatly left me thinking my GR1 would be taken out more often from now on:)

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  3. AtomicZen21 January 2009 at 10:07

    Hi Mike,

    Your summary towards film camera and photo blogger has directly reminded me that I should avoid window shopping at secondhand film camera. ;) Recently, I fall in love with Nikon FM2n, black body. I used to have Nikon FE2 ten years ago. It is very good film camera. Yet, when consider my lifestyle and process in posting photos to my blog, purchasing another film camera could bring me to several problems.
    (1) Inconvenience
    (2) Later cost of having it
    (3) Time consuming in order to process

    Thanks to your post on this issue.

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  4. mike21 January 2009 at 12:20

    Thanks for your comments.

    Cristi and Tom, do you know how most of the shops print pictures nowadays? All digital! If it's film, they just scan it and print... So why not scan it by ourselves and do the job under our control?

    I highly recommend Nikon COOLSCAN V (http://www.europe-nikon.com/product/en_GB/products/broad/54/overview.html)or the newer SUPER COOLSCAN 5000 (http://www.europe-nikon.com/product/en_GB/products/broad/55/overview.html). They're not cheap but much cheaper than the professional ones. Their quality is very good.

    Tom, I think the only justice you can do to your GR1 is by developing and printing the film by a professional in the traditional way. Based on Cristi's bad experience, you may not be able to get good print from a shop even with a professional scanner. My opinion is to take it easy. Only the result counts.

    You're welcome, Bhuminan. Have you read my post yesterday? I ponder the topic of film and digital photography in my eyes as a blogger.

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  5. Cristian22 January 2009 at 15:13

    Mike, what you say makes sense and having your own scanner is the best way to keep as much control as possible over the picture.
    There are however still some printers who print using the traditional way at not much extra cost as we discovered during the SWPP Tradeshow last week.

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