Get Off My Lawn
Camera manufacturers, led by Canon and Nikon, continue to push digital SLR development to new levels, with ever increasing image quality and more features. As a photographer, I don't care any more.
I drank the digital Kool-Aid for a few years, sure. I have a DSLR, high-end, though a few years old, and continue to use it, particularly for things like landscapes where with film I might use medium format. Of course, for what I paid for it, I could have had a nice medium format kit, film scanner to go with it, and a couple years worth of film, and ended up with something that wouldn't be obsolete after a few years. But film was supposed to be dead, so that's not what I did.
The image quality with digital is great. But with it, the manufacturers have finally discovered a way to get us to buy a new camera every couple of years, spending more money while simultaneously thinking digital is cheaper. 35mm film isn't as bad as they've convinced us to remember – it's actually astonishingly good by comparison, and I'm picky about that sort of thing. Landscapes were never its strong point, but medium format film will give today's DSLRs a run for their money (lots of money) in that regard.
When I decided to shoot film again, I thought it would be a side project, with most shooting still in digital. What I discovered, though, was that I enjoyed photography a whole lot more shooting film with a fully-manual SLR. The hand-held computers we use as cameras now just get in the way. I didn't fully realize that until I got it out of the way. It turns out that all those shiny features are things I don't need to do photography.
How quickly we were convinced they were necessary! When shooting digital, how are we supposed to determine exposure? We use test shots, look at histograms, depend on the instant-review LCD, and suddenly think we need that to get the shot right. Have we really forgotten, just a few years ago, when we didn't have any of that stuff, and got it right anyway?
I remember the day when, still shooting digital, I remembered that, in direct sunlight, the exposure is always the same. Yes, it works for digital, too. What do I need that 1005-point 3D Color Matrix Meter for, again?
Unlike many curmudgeons, I understand the newfangled technology better than most, and I continue to pull out the digital camera for landscapes or quick snapshots; and my film cameras don't have autofocus or image stabilization and can't shoot hundreds of frames without reloading, so if I need those things, I know where to go. But all these developments in the world of digital photography have stopped being interesting to me. They don't have anything to do with photography, and I just don't care.
Sometimes, 35mm film can do landscapes, too.
