Fast Forward

The image of our Grandson, Jack, in the previous post was made on 35mm Fuji 1600 ISO film.....eleven years ago. Not really so long ago but scanning it and processing it in Photoshop to put on the net was a shock. Granted I'm scanning it with a flatbed scanner but the grain is BIG.

I've never been very fond of using a flash so while photographing the grandchildren I used fast film. And back eleven years ago the fast film was 35mm. So even though I was shooting my work with a medium format camera, most of the interior shots of Jack were made with 35mm film.

At any rate, while I was working on the image in Photoshop, I was thinking about all of the photographic changes in the last eleven years.

I could not have made the same image of this negative in the darkroom without hours of test prints, dodging and burning and even then I don't think my darkroom skills would have been up to this and I'm not even saying that this file would make a great print but it is acceptable for the net.

I've gone digital and while I was trying to work with this scan, I was wishing that I had this image from my Canon 5D at 1600 ISO. Photographers talk about "noise" in digital files but trust me, noise at 1600 ISO is nothing compared to the grain of film at 1600 ISO. And if I had this image in a digital file, I'd have the choice of making the image black and while or color.

Yeah, I'm amazed at how fast Jack has grown up and I'm amazed at the changes in photography in eleven years. We've come a long way!