Last night Megan and I had a fantastic dinner with Rulie and her new Beau (who shall remain nameless for now). Rulie made this amazing spread of Moroccon dishes. The winner of the show was the lemon olive chicken. She hunted down these special preserved lemons. Mmmmm preserved lemons. Sound good right? Nope. I was expecting them to be sweet like those candy lemon slices, but nooooo, they were actually pickled. Needless to say when you are expecting sweet and get pickled, you are bound to make a very interesting face. Fortunately they transform when you cook them, so they were fantastic in the final dish.

Rulie lives in center city next to suburban station. After dinner we went up to the roof of her building and admired the view before our faces froze. I had my 4×5 Speedgraphic with me and fired off a couple shots. I don’t think I’ve ever been that cold. Ever. I shot 4 frames in about 5 minutes and couldnt feel my face or hands by the end. I was afraid I was going to drop the camera 20 stories off the building! That would not have been good.

Here is one of the images I got. I think they came out pretty well considering that I was estimating the exposure. One one-thousand…two one-thousand, etc. This one was about 65 seconds @ f/32 on HP5 pushed to 800 for those of you that care.

Ahhhh film vs. digital. Few debates can raise photographer’s blood pressure as much (except maybe mac v. windows and canon v. nikon). Which is better? Why?

The fact is that they are both great. I shoot digital for 98% of my work. It has more advantages than I can list. I own the latest and greatest super digital SLR’s. I process the images on computers that make HAL seem lame. But I also love film. I get such a kick out of running some madium or large format film through one of my ancient cameras.

So which is better? Both.

To me asking which is better is like asking a painter which brush is best. They all do different things and they do them equally well. Digital excels at flexibility and speed. Film excels at the sheer amount of information captured, dynamic range, and that certain intangible quality.

Wait, did I just say film captures more info than digital? Can this be right? Well, yes and no. I’m comparing apples and oranges. I won’t bore you with the details.

Anyway, this image was shot on a 50 year old junker camera and sat around undeveloped for a year.

My rambling has a point. It’s this - why do you have to choose one or the other? Both film and digital have their strengths and weaknesses. Use them like paintbrushes - choose what’s best for the job!p.s if you are interested here are more of my film shots: