Sometimes you need a do-over when taking photographs. Understandably even the most skilled photographers need to “take it again” every now and then. As for myself I find this especially true when shooting wide open aperture with slow speed (ISO) film. With the aperture wide open the margin of error is greater and the zone of focus finite. During my brief foray into digital photography I became accustomed to taking what seemed like a million shots of the same subject and checking it on the screen in back of the camera. I would keep saying to myself no, next, no, next and shoot until I thought I had the composure and focus I wanted. Now that I am back in the familiar arms of film and film cameras sans the handy viewer screen, I still occasionally take multiple exposures of the same subject when something didn’t “feel” right. That part of the process is inescapable sometimes. The difference is instead of the 5-8 I might take with the digital, I take 2 on film. I can only speculate on why I treat the two technologies differently. One reason is with digital I can look on the back and see the changes on each image I made in real time. Being somewhat of a perfectionist,I might keep going until I got it just right. The second reason is with film it really doesn’t matter. I won’t be able to check the first frame much less the second. With that thought in mind a typical scenario plays out in a sequence. I take the shot and if my gut tells me something might not have been correct, I can only make adjustments and squeeze the shutter again. Beyond that it is the best you can do. Anything after a second try is just a waste of time.
With all that in mind I still am happy with the limitations of film and all that it entails. I guess there are many different reasons why digital did not take when I was courting that technology. The main reason that stands out for me is a lot less photographs of the same subject or what I like to call an excess of images on my hard drive. The second reason would be is I really enjoy the process of making photographs. Besides that I am at ease with the uncertainty when shooting with film. While taking a photograph of a really important subject, a dialog stats in my head. Did I get that awesome shot, and was it exposed correctly? Well I sure the hell hope so because if I did, it will be awesome. :) For the record the second photo below was my first attempt and as you can tell there is very little difference between the two, except maybe composure and small amounts of lighting variation.
