Some of us are old enough to remember Kodachrome 64. I bought a slide copier attachment and just now copied the slides I shot in February 1985 on my first trip to Kenya. I always liked the look of that film. I don't think it's possible to reproduce that look with digital, even with all the software you want.

Very nice Wink! It seems only the late Polaroid films had greater color saturation.
Wonderful photographs, as we have come to expect from you. Thanks for sharing.

Contrary to present day digital, shooting slide film forced you to get your exposure and composition correct, since you couldn't really do anything to it after it was shot. What you shot was what you got. You couldn't "fix it in post-processing" like you can today (unless you went the complicated internegative in a darkroom route) and color temperature was a film choice, not a camera or post-processing adjustment. Once scanned to a digital RAW file, you can however play with software all you want. The photos above were untouched after digitizing, but I will try some stuff out in the future.

But there is a look and feel to film photographs that can't seem to be duplicated with a digital camera. Most of you have seen Nick Brandt's black & white photography, but most don't know that he uses a medium format camera (a Pentax 67II) with B&W film to shoot his negatives, then digitizes them to do his post-processing on a computer for printing later. For some, that's the best of both worlds. B&W film isn't dead yet and a lot of photographers are returning to shooting their negatives with Tri-X or T-Max, to get the tonal gradations and the grain of film, then post-processing with their software.

When I went to Africa in the 70's I took one of the last purely mechanical cameras made, the Nikon FM (it was new then, it had just come out). By purely mechanical I mean "works without batteries". It was the right choice for someone who went into the bush for months at a time. It's still a good choice for someone who shoots B&W film and wants an almost indestructible camera. (There's an FM2 and an FM3 which are just as good).

I'm sitting on the right, having a breakfast of coffee and "beignets" in N'Délé (CAR), summer of 1977. My camera is under the bench.






Hanging out with pygmies south of M'Baiki (CAR), probably 1979. As you can see, elephant hair bracelets were already a fad.




Kids in N'délé. The sputnik hair-do was in style.

At first I wondered about the real utility of doing all these digitalizations. But I have come across some old nuggets and enjoy squeezing some new life out of them.





Especially since software lets you try new stuff.

Wink, you have had a wonderful life!
From time to time, I still dream of a Hasselblad with a full complement of Zeiss Planar lenses, and a full darkroom. Won't happen, of course. But I miss the sting of stop bath in a paper cut sometimes. I know, doesn't make sense.

Beautiful as always.
Back in '71-2 in Germany I shot around 200 rolls of Ektachrome. Lots of fine slides. Projector got to blowing bulbs so I just stuffed 'em in a cool cabinet yrs ago. About ten yrs ago I got some out and most had gone blank over the years in the dark. Plumb disgusting for the price of the film back then.

Thanks for sharing,
George

quote:

Originally posted by georgeld:
Beautiful as always.
Back in '71-2 in Germany I shot around 200 rolls of Ektachrome. Lots of fine slides. Projector got to blowing bulbs so I just stuffed 'em in a cool cabinet yrs ago. About ten yrs ago I got some out and most had gone blank over the years in the dark. Plumb disgusting for the price of the film back then.

Thanks for sharing,
George

When I look at the few Ektachromes I shot I noticed the fading. I always shot Kodachrome because I preferred the mailers that came with them (or could buy separately), allowing return delivery to a reliable address. Useful when you're in the middle of nowhere all the time. It seems the Kodachrome film was more "archival" than the Ektachrome.

Wow, thanks for sharing Wink !

The colors are fabulous .

Ahhhh to blue jumbo for my eye. Put in some yellow and the are super pic.
Kodakcrome 64 was to be expose at 80 asa.
Hunt safe wisent