It's been a full on year. Mind you, we seem to say that about every year that passes. 2024 was the year that I shot more film than digital. It was the year that I hit the wall from burn out at work. I dropped from full time, to part time, and then my contract ended and my employer at the time tried to force me to casual. I walked away, saddened that I wouldn't get the support from them that I had worked hard to deserve.
It's been a year of changes, that's for sure. My dedication to film has been an interesting experience. I sold most of my digital gear, and shot primarily 35mm and large format. I do my own development and scanning, and love the process. Recently though, I've been wondering how long I can realistically keep up shooting so much film. The cost alone is crazy. The slide film shots that I put up in my previous blog article, for instance. The price for each shot works out to be about $18 AUD per frame once factoring development costs and the original purchase price of the film. Yeah... that hurts.
35mm fairs quite a bit better when it comes to pricing, especially with the black and white images. I bulk roll, so let's say it's $8.35 a roll based on a $150 100ft spool, getting 18 rolls out of it. Development cost is way cheaper, with the dev chemicals (not the fixer or stopper) working out to about $0.56 a roll. Factor in fixer and stopper, and the total dev cost comes to around $2 AUD per roll.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love film. The tactile nature of it, and somewhat the unpredictability of it is enjoyable. Having something tangible from my photography is wonderful.
But there's something else. Something that has been nagging at the back of my mind for a little while now.
I'm not as happy or as proud of my film images as I am with the digital images I have taken. I feel I have some excellent shots, don't get me wrong, however it seems that I can express myself better and get images that I am happier with from a digital setup. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
I got to use a lot of digital cameras in 2024. Looking at my Lightroom catalogue, I used 12 digital cameras at various points of the year:
Fujifilm GFX 100s
Fujifilm GFX 50r
Fujifilm X100VI
Fujifilm XH2
Ricoh GR III HDF
Pentax KIII Monochrome
Pentax K-R
Leica Q2 Monochrome
Nikon Z8
Nikon ZF
Nikon D850
Canon 5D IV
Quite the list! Some of these were for work related projects (I do social media marketing campaigns for someone on contract) so I wasn't able to be creative with them all. But, I can say that the images I got from a lot of these I love. I took the GFX cameras on a trip with me, and they were fantastic. Same as the XH2, I got some lovely landscape images with that. The Z8 I used heavily over a trip away, too, and for some commercial work. That camera is absolutely brilliant. The ZF I used for some street and nature photography, and enjoyed it. The D850 produced some lovely images for sunrise shots, and for some commercial work. The Q2 was fun for some photos of the kids and street shots around a marina over a weekend. I did not enjoy the Ricoh, however I did get a couple of images I love from it. The Pentax gear was fun, but ultimately not for me.
The images, though. I love a lot of the images I got out of many of these cameras. I've made prints on my Epson P906 printer and had some framed. Again, the tangible aspect is wonderful.
From the film side of things, I've shot (an estimated) 20 35mm cameras, several 120 cameras and a large format 4x5 camera a lot. The 4x5 has helped me created my best film images, both in the 4x5 format and the panoramic formats of 617 and 612. Yet, out of all the images I created that I am proud of when it comes to film, there's way, way less than there are digital images.
I'm honestly surprised. I've heavily invested in film, chemicals and equipment this year. Yet I feel that it may be holding me back. Certainly, the landscape images that I do so love making have been less and less this year. I was determined that next year would be an even more film intensive year for me, but I'm now rethinking that. I seem to express myself better through a digital medium, and to be honest I miss that.
This may be an indication that I'll move back to digital more. I won't give up film completely, but maybe, just maybe, I'll dial it back a bit and concentrate just on one format instead of multiple. As it stands, I have an excellent printer that I can use to get the images out of the computer, and that alone is a great thing. It'll give me that tangible end result.
Plus, it'll save a few $$, which can't hurt!
I'll just need to work out what digital platform to lock myself into now...