Response to Assignment 1C

What I learned from working with film:

    1) Film is finicky and mildly terrifying: The suspense of opening up the camera, not knowing if the film spooled in correctly -- and knowing that if it didn't your photographs are ruined -- is rather unwelcome. While some of it's temperamental nature may be attributed to the fact that our equipment is old, I think some of it is also simply the nature of film as a medium.

    2) Film is forgiving. When compared to shooting on a DSLR, I found the exposures to be more forgiving in terms of accuracy and depth of image. When shooting digital, you do not have much lee-way with how you set your camera. Here, all three of the bracketed images were usable in some sense. This is most likely because the dynamic range of film is greater. Of course, this is counteracted by the fact that one can immediately see and rapidly take photos on a DSLR.

    3) Film is exciting. Despite my cynicism and love of digital I must admit that it was exciting to shoot on film. I think part of that goes with my general lack of experience with and knowledge of film. It feels (to me) less like an understandable process and more of a magically mystery. When I would release the shutter I was not quite sure what was going on chemically. On top of that the suspense of taking the pictures and having no idea what they will look like until they are developed. That's fun too.

What really excited me about this assignment was not necessarily the film, but the methodical process used to get images with the camera. I really enjoyed measuring each shot with the measuring tape, to know that I am in focus without a doubt, using the sekonic to get all sorts of data on light readings and then finally taking the photo with the desired stops. It -- somewhat ironically -- felt a lot less like experimentation than the manual setting on my DSLR does. When i'm using manual on my DSLR I can take a picture, see the outcome and adjust accordingly.

In short, I guess I felt more professional and less amateurish. Plus, when the senior citizens at my job back home ask me if I actually used film in film studies I can tell them "yes, I did."