Maybe I'm going soft in my old age but I have found myself using a digital camera a little more than usual recently. From 100% anti-digital I found myself shooting more with my girlfriend's Canon 300D when both my money and film stocks began running low. I've never owned my own digital camera and have no desire to get one. The idea was to document little things around me using digital so I wasn't wasting film.
This is how things have continued until I discovered that by setting customised parameters on the 300D I could achieve a low contrast and low saturation image, like I had been trying to get using film.
The image above was taken about 20 minutes ago. I took two photos at the time and deleted one straight away because it was too over-exposed. Next I uploaded it to flickr and now I'm using it to illustrate my point here. If I had taken this with film it could have taken anywhere between a day and a month to get the negs back, along with the further scanning and printing costs that naturally occur.
My point is this image is taken because at the moment I like to take photos of unusual light patterns etc. This probably will never be used for anything apart from my personal archive. By using digital to take photos like this I'm saving money that can be spent on other photographic projects.
Also since I no longer have darkroom access and no longer work in a mini-lab I can no longer print my own work. Handing over control to such a huge part of the process makes me sad. I'm lucky to have found Ian, at Silvertone, who I trust more than myself to print my exhibition work but as far as a regular mini-lab for run of the mill colour films I'm constantly disappointed. Whether it be with print quality or a host of other issues I can't seem to find one that I have faith in.
This is more for my benefit than anyone else's but I still love film. The standard of print that can be achieved by using film will never be matched by digital, there's a depth to the image than goes beyond explanation. If an image is never going to be a print though, well then aspects like convenience, speed, time, money.....make digital a more attractive option.
