I found a FB group the other day whose title appealed to me: 'Traditional Film Photography'. So I applied to join and suprisingly I was accepted. But now I'm left feeling more than a bit let down. Yes this is a group dedicated to those who use film. So far so good, eh? But wait, 99% of the posts are from scanned negatives which are then processed digitally before upload. I've seen very few scans of 'wet prints' and I'm disappointed. I just don't get this hybrid approach - why would you go to the bother of using film to capture the subject and then switch to digital for the 'printing'? I mean, where's the skill in that? In tweaking a few sliders on an app designed by someone else? Come on. This just can't compare to darkroom work.
I know you can't expect the same volume of images uploaded if you do darkroom printing (hence the low number of posts on this blog relative to other photography-related blogs), but that's just the nature of the thing. Sometime less is more, right?
Anyway, this particular group has over 10,000 members. Wow. That's a lot of people using film which is great, as it will help film will be around a while longer. But I just don't care for all those digitally processed images - even if they are from film negative scans. Give me a silver print anyday - that's what I call traditional.
Just have to agree with you, and beeing a member of the same group myself I got the same impression. Another side of the story is that I'm one of those many sinners doing it this way to easily get something posted. No, it's not the right way to do it, and no I don't like it much either. Yes, it's to easy to fall into that pit, and give me that good old darkroom and I will start to post a lot more scanned silverprints straight away!! My blog is suffering from the same issue as well, and I don't like that too much either. It will have to do though, for now anyway. Hope to get going soon, to get that light tight wall built and start moving stuff inside. The bathroom option is just to full of hassle with a bunch of female teenagers and a wife, and a female (very hairy) cat in the house! But I'm getting there, one day :))
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