The Storr, Skye, Fuji Velvia RVP 50

Personally, I made my mind up a few years ago which medium works well for my style of photography. We pay our money, we make our choices and I respect anyone else’s decision to go with whatever medium, be it digital or film.

But I’d like to talk about the false assumption that Film is expensive to shoot. I hear from a lot of people that they’re interested in moving to film, but the cost of buying the stock and processing it is cost-prohibitive for them. Add in the fact that you need to buy a decent film scanner, and the speed at which you can turn around your images – and it rapidly becomes a no-no for most.

I think there are really two arguments to this. One is, I’m a bit worried about it costing me money and the other is ‘I’m not committed enough to try film out’. Both are completely separate arguments.

I don’t think film is expensive, if you consider that buying a new DSLR every two to three years is a reality for a lot of people. I think it comes down to the fact that people like buying cameras, like buying the latest equipment. This has nothing to do with creating art.

If you want to get into film, then buying a film camera at the moment couldn’t be cheaper. Buying a decent film scanner will be a little harder as there are few to choose from and most keep good second hand prices on eBay. But I reckon if you stick with that cheap Medium Format outfit and a sub 1K film scanner for more than 3 years, you’ll be just as cheap as buying a new DSLR, and you get the chance to try different film stocks with their respective look and feel properties. You may even find that you love shooting Medium format, Large Format, and wonder why you never made the jump in the first place. You may discover that this has opened up a new creative path for you.

On the other hand, you may be happy buying the latest digital SLR every couple of years – which is fine. Just consider that the argument about film being expensive is a moot point. If you really wanted to try film out, there’d be no stopping you.

Apple’s version 3 of Aperture has just hit the shelves. When Aperture 1 came out, I was a big fan. I liked the approach, the philosophy behind it, but the performance of the software (the more hardware you throw at it, the more it consumed) along with the number of bugs in it really left me feeling short changed.

Then version 2 was announced I had high hopes that they’d fixed the performance of it. But they hadn’t. They’d covered up some of the cracks with ‘fast preview’ buttons for example, to make it appear that the software was working fast. The only thing was that my CPU was getting hammered all the time – just even by opening it up.

So I did what I didn’t want to do: I moved to lightroom, which I felt at the time (and still do) had poor library features and a clunky interface. But Lightroom is fast, it will work on any piece of hardware and even my old G5 is very happy playing ball with it. So I’ve come to love Lightroom, besides the interface and the poor library features, it does what it says on the tin, and it does it really well.

I feel Apple had a chance back at version 1 of Aperture. Lightroom was still new and a bit wet behind the ears too. But it’s perhaps too late for Apple to convince all those but their existing customers to give Aperture 3 a go.

I’m no longer in the market for a Raw Converter program but I am in the need of a good software library, so I guess my pondering over Aperture is a bit moot. Lightroom and Aperture both have similar issues with dealing with large film-scanned images – they don’t perform well. But this is mostly irrelevant for photographers these days as the number of film shooters is really in the minority now.

Photographed in Patagonia this March, I’ve shot glacier Grey in Torres del Paine several times, and each time, it brings something new.

I think that what is beautiful about glaciers in photographic terms are the endless possibilities of shape. Not only is each berg different, but also bringing them together can create some interesting compositions. In the above shot, notice how there are a lot of diagonal lines leading through the entire shot. Then there is also symmetry – each side of the shot is weighted by a similar sized berg and right in the middle, there is a little one, just to fill in the foreground a little. That’s already just fine as it is, but adding a hint of mountain top into the background just helps make the whole composition sit well with the eye.

The boat was moving, but as it did so, I kept shooting this same scene until I felt everything had just ‘clicked’ into place. Photography is not just about light, but about composition and balance.

I’ve just upgraded to Apple’s Aperture 2.0 and whilst doing that, I’ve come across this raw file from last years trip to Patagonia.

Elliott Erwitt said that he has negatives spanning the entire duration of his career (well over 40 years worth) and he sometimes finds upon reviewing them that there is something he missed first time round.

It’s good to revisit all the transparencies (or raw files) that you’ve shot – there may be something there you missed first time round.

I find it hard to be objective straight after a shoot and a sense of distance is often required. It’s only then that I can see images for what they are, rather than what I wanted to achieve.

I’d forgotten about this picture of the Culpeo. It has a nice composition.

But digital has quite a lot of advantages over film and I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that I will be using both in the future. Film is strong in the departments of skin tones (Kodak Portra) and Saturated landscapes (Velvia). Digital on the other hand has immediate feedback and in terms of doing night shots or sunrise/sunset shots, it doesn’t suffer from reciprocity effect which is present in all films.

In case you don’t know what reciprocity effect is I’ll explain. Film exposure is pretty much consistent from around 2 seconds upwards. But when you shoot longer exposures, the relationship between the shutter and the aperture fall apart. In essence, film becomes less sensitive to light, the longer it is exposed. So typically, if your light meter indicates an exposure time greater than 2-4 seconds then the meter is pretty much guaranteed to be wrong. You have to compensate and extend the exposure time in order to get a correctly exposed shot. If you don’t, the film will be underexposed.

Now with digital capture, all of this becomes a thing of the past. The only issue you have to contend with is digital sensor noise. If you can imagine, the sensor is sampling the scene for the entire duration the shutter is open, and that means heat build up on the sensor. Due to all the electrons flying around, noise build up. Some cameras have algorithms built into them to remove the noise at the end of the exposure. That’s why if you shoot a 10 second exposure, it takes the camera quite a bit of time after the exposure has complete to show you the preview.

The image you see above is a digital capture. I’m pretty sure I would never have caught this on a film camera without having a lot of skill and experience of shooting in the dark. I was able to dial in the exposure value I wanted into a nice little remote handset called a Canon TC-80N3. It allows me to use the camera on bulb and dial in the number of hours, minutes, seconds for the exposure… which is great as I’m always forgetting to keep check on the stop watch I carry with me (yes, a stop watch is a ‘must have’ for long exposures).

In terms of how the image was made, I’d been out shooting at Torness nuclear power station on the east cost of Scotland. I was just returning back to my car after it had got dark and whilst putting things away, I saw the sky moving very quickly. I loved the orange colour from the sodium lights in the car park and in particular thought the lights looked rather alien with all this strange light and swirling clouds going on. So I set up the camera on a tripod and used the remote timer I mentioned above. It took around three attempts to get the correct exposure because my light meter couldn’t give me a reading so I had to guess (I have a hand held Sekonic meter). After each shot, I was able to check the preview screen to see if I’d got the exposure correct.

I love surreal images and I certainly subscribe to the idea than an image should be an expression of your imagination. Shooting at night adds another dimension to photography and your own experiences of being ‘out there’.

Of course, this could have been captured on film, but I wouldn’t have known if I’d got it ‘in the bag’. I’ll be posting more articles on both film and digital, because each has it’s own strengths and weaknesses.

If you do go out to shoot at night – take warm clothes and a flask of hot tea, and don’t be surprised if the first few attempts result in you coming home because you got a little bit freaked out….. it takes a while to get over the fear of being out in the dark on your own.

To view my portfolio of Torness images click here.

Torness is situated on the east cost of Scotland on a reclaimed peninsula which is protected from the sea by a man made coast line of concrete blocks.

I like to do repeat visits to locations. Sometimes I’ll come home with nothing, while other times, Ill find something new. In January we had a really hard cold spell. The changes in seasons can often add a new dimension to a place so I decided to head out to Torness to see what might happen.

I’m always looking for compositions, and if I find something that is of interest, I then start to look for things around to anchor it. What I mean by this is that I will try to find elements of the surrounding landscape to use in order to ‘lead the eye’ into the picture. This is always done with what is there – I never move things of create a contrived view point. I just look for what is there and decide if it’s a good place to shoot from.

With wide angle images it’s a classic compositional device to have something in the foreground of the image. My initial interest had been in the two concrete towers in the distance, and I knew that an image of them alone would not be interesting enough. The cost line had been manufactured (yes, that’s right – it’s not natural) of large stone blocks that had been moved into position to create a defence against the sea. It was covered in frost and the cracks and textures of the ground were far too interesting to pass up on. So I spent a few minutes searching the location for the best vantage point where I could get the right composition.

This is something I always do – I explore the surrounding landscape – always looking for the best compositional aspect. Many people use their zoom lenses to move around a scene, and often stay routed to the same spot for the entire duration of the shoot. I tend to like to roam, make a few shots and move off again. Always in search of a better vantage point.

The resulting image was a long exposure because the light was starting to fade, and also, because I’m partly fascinated by the idea of compressing many moments of time into one image. But what I also loved about the shot was the monochrome aspect to it. The light here in Scotland is very ‘cold’ and tends to have more blue in it’s spectrum. Coupled with fading winter light and an overcast sky, I had very soft tones with which to shoot and used a 3 stop ND Soft Grad filter on the image to balance the earth with the sky.