[Major_Small]

Originally Posted by shootoften

With the switch to digital, and the ability to view an image instantly, those feelings of anticipation, excitement, and accomplishment are somewhat “dulled” in comparison.

Nobody said you had to chimp for every shot

Originally Posted by shootoften

They’ve been replaced with: That’s a pretty decent shot, or that one will be awesome, when I bump up the saturation and add a levels or curves adjustment. “Don’t get me wrong, I realize that film processing requires adjustments to the images as well.” It’s just that now, with the ability to do all the work myself at home on my computer, the final print doesn’t seem to have the same “perfection factor” that the print/slide did back in the day!

It's the same as it was back in the day for me. Once I developed the film and made the contact sheet, I would look at them and make notes of 'keepers', the same way I do now, and then head into the dark room and try to perfect them in there.

Originally Posted by shootoften

Now, once I get an image looking the way I want it, (perfect), I will look at it again a week or so done the road, and think, it still needs a color adjustment here, or a little dodging or sharpening there.

I've always and will always do that with every shot. Once you stop seeing flaws in your own work, you stop growing as a photographer.

To me digital is a whole lot better than film. With film, I'd go around shooting, and not even bother developing the film, just because it was such a pain to sit there keeping track of times and agitating. And the more rolls that built up, the less I would want to get it done. The darkroom was fun to a point. I miss seeing the image appear once the paper hit the chemicals, but I don't miss taking the print out into the light and realizing I needed a different filter, or that I didn't dodge/burn enough or whatever. And I especially didn't like spotting. What I really miss about the darkroom is the alone time I got, the "bonding" () that people did in there, and the fun we had.

I guess if you take the film to a lab and get prints back, it's a completely different experience, but when you do all the processing and printing on your own, it really just becomes tedious and repetitive. Taking the film out of the wash wasn't an "ooh! let's see the pretty pictures!" type of deal - it was more like "I really hope nothing went wrong" type of feeling - because there was a lot more that could go wrong than could go right with the process. Now, I can spend more time shooting, and less time editing. I know that sounds backwards, but it's the truth. If you take the time from taking the film out of the canister to hanging the print on the line and compare it to the time between connecting the camera to the computer and having a finished image, it's MUCH shorter for me.