I guess that film photography isn't quite dead yet

[freeradical]

M>B> wrote:
Free,

You have to look at CRC campus where they have a super new digital facility...

http://www.losrios.edu/class_schedules_r...-PHOTO.htm

Classes, 302, 312 and 400. Several sections of beginning, intermediate and advanced.

That's pretty impressive; it must be a much newer campus.

The ARC campus is pretty run down; I think many of the facilities date back to the mid 50's.

[M>B>]

Free,

I took my first Digital Imaging (Photoshop) class at ARC in 1993. It was pretty basic then and Photoshop was only 3 years old v.2.5. I ended up teaching at CRC for 15 or so years till recently. They have a fairly new Arts and Technology building. The digital imaging center has 30 or so new Mac towers w/ 20 inch monitors all wired to the internet and central server. Teachers station had a large projection unit and Apples Remote Desktop to view each students monitor and interact with them. Several film and flatbed scanning stations and two 17 in. Epson pigment printers and a big 42 in. one. Everything was color managed when I was there and each class had a resident technician to help the instructor. Best facility that I ever taught at.

[DP]

Film will never go away. I have two colleagues that shoot film for their personal photography although one scans his film for output.
You definitely don't need 25mp-I've seen beautiful images from 8mp DSLR's but this is a discussion that would take up a few pages!
I don't shoot film unless I'm teaching a film class. If you like B&W then check out Jeff Schewe's stuff (will check for his website). His technique for digital conversions to B&W is fabulous. As he said "B&W film is dead". With PS and the great printers and papers available I just can't get my hands in those chemicals, etc. BTW, a good paper that is inexpensive is Epson Watercolor paper. It has a watercolor paper (!) texture and the prints I get from my Canon printer are beautiful.
Our digital labs have similar setups at the two schools where I teach.

[tronnei]

lost in space wrote:
I took B&W photography at a nearby Community College. Got to know the instructor VERY well. She was a bit older than me. I learned a lot.

About photography?

[Don Kiyoti]

As he said "B&W film is dead".

Nah. With respect to Jeff Schewe, whose work is excellent, B&W film may be dead for him but those blanket pronouncements alway make me roll my eyes. I've just started getting back into film: Kodachrome before it's too late and Ilford FP4 & HP5. I guess I'm ending up with a sort of hybrid, as I'm converting the negs to digital and processing them in Lightroom. So to that extent we're on the same page. These scans do look noticeably different than a digital conversion, and I enjoy the look.








This one is a conversion of a digital photo:

[mrbigstuff]

tronnei wrote:
[quote=lost in space]
I took B&W photography at a nearby Community College. Got to know the instructor VERY well. She was a bit older than me. I learned a lot.

About photography?
yeah, what's that all about?

[lost in space]

mrbigstuff wrote:
[quote=tronnei]
[quote=lost in space]
I took B&W photography at a nearby Community College. Got to know the instructor VERY well. She was a bit older than me. I learned a lot.

About photography?
yeah, what's that all about?
Well, let's say she taught me about photography and art. and life. And then she broke my heart. One of those experiences that a young man will remember forever. Took me years to see realize that I was a better person for it, just like she said. I owe her.

I've also heard about PSing a digital image to a B&W negative. Print it onto a transparency. Then you have a hi-res negative that can be printed in a darkroom. The idea appeals to me. You can do a lot of manipulation in PS, but still get to print in silver emulsion. Never got around to trying it. Anybody?

[ka jowct]

I love the rituals, sights and sounds that go with film.

Yeah, so do I, more so the darkroom part of it, even though I never got very good at it. I never got tired of watching the image come up in the developer, and working away in the dark was something I found very peaceful and satisfying. The schools I attended had decent photo labs and I was in there for hours, sometimes all night.

I set up primitive darkrooms in my apartments after leaving school: of course I had none of the nice temperature control gear that they had at school, much less in the way of rinsing capabilities, and a lot more dust and debris. I realize that just about every way, I'm better off scanning my film images and working on them in PS, and that it would make my "art" work process much easier, were I ever to get the time, energy, and studio space to work on drawings and paintings again. But I miss the look of b&w silver prints.