The Hex at the Museum

[Rob MacKillop]

Konica Hexar AF at the National Museum of Scotland

1. Half of the museum is a magnificent 19th-century stone, glass and steel edifice:




2. The atrium:





3. Rhona shooting the abstract:





4. What she was looking at:





5. In the new museum area. The architecture has modern versions of features found in the Scottish baronial houses, which in turn used elements of medieval castles:





6. This woman kept staring at me...




7. Slightly off centre and balance...

 

[Hamish Gill]

These are brilliant.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

I'm really pleased with them. So much so I really have gone off my digital photography. I love this camera, so to hell with the costs of development and scanning more film from now on.

 

[Ivar Dahl-Larsen]

She probably thought you were famous, and aren't you.? Well done Rob.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Infamous is the word you were looking for, Ivar

 

[Hamish Gill]

I'm really pleased with them. So much so I really have gone off my digital photography. I love this camera, so to hell with the costs of development and scanning more film from now on.

All of this is correct!

 

[Hamish Gill]

Hope you don't mind Rob, but I posted this to the 35mmc facebook wall with a select quote
https://www.facebook.com/35mmc

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Ha. I don't mind at all.

My £3.99 Pentax Zoom 90 arrived this morning. No battery, a CR123A - I'll try to get one today in town.

 

[Hamish Gill]

Haha, brilliant!

 

[Brian Moore]

Lovely stuff, Rob.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Thanks, Brian. I blame you!

 

[Rob MacKillop]

And Hamish!

 

[Julian de'Courcy]

Yes good set Rob. I wonder how expensive using film is if taking into account how we get sucked into buying the latest iteration of the digital version which is useless after six months and needs to be replaced for the Mk1-2-3-4-5-----. A bit like those movies that coined in the money until version six.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Yes, Julian, I've been thinking along those lines too. Either way, it's a bloody waste of money!

 

[Brian Moore]

Rob,...just curious because I know my own reason for preferring film but would love to know yours...why are you leaning away from digital toward film? What is it about film?

 

[Rob MacKillop]

You know the answer, Brian - because film guys are sexier!

Seriously, film is imperfect, while digital can be perfect. But I don't like perfection much. Even "perfect", beautiful women seem alien. I like character, and the character of film speaks more to me just now. It was not always thus, and might change again. However, when I study the photos by others I like most - not here at RPF, more the great photographers of the past - I notice that I'm drawn much more towards those who used film.

I also like not knowing how a shot has turned out until I see it later. And that often makes me take more care, though not always, in framing and timing a shot.

I also feel I did too much digital post production. A lot (not all) of my digital work suddenly looks odd to me. I enjoyed doing it, on the whole, so I won't say I wasted my time, and there are some good images there, by my standards. But film work seems just more what photography was born to be - the effect of light on chemicalised paper, an imprint, a shadow of life. I like the simplicity of that.

Oh, I don't know - I just like it!

 

[Brian Moore]

You know the answer, Brian - because film guys are sexier!

That's obvious,...I was hoping for a more nuanced response.

Seriously, film is imperfect, while digital can be perfect.

That's it for me.

Someone on Flickr (I think it was) put it very well I thought, saying something to the effect of "digital looks like what I saw, whereas film looks like what I remember."

 

[Hamish Gill]

I continue to experience this Rob.
If I shoot with a digital camera I over-process, look back days later and don't like what I did. It's a weird experience, but it still, and I think always happens. Film just seems to tap into a more mature photographer in me, one that know what he wants and how to achieve it.

I think it is the limitation of the medium. You make your choices about the aesthetic rather than after. Before results in a fixed mindset, so when I get the photos back I don't want to change them. With digital the choice to create something comes to a great extent after the photo. And that seems to lead to me ballsing it up!

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Exactly.

PS The Pentax Zoom 90 I got on eBay for £3.99 doesn't work It shows a code E7, and a little search online reveals a repair price of around £70. At £3.99 it's hardly worth making a fuss about on eBay, but it's still very annoying.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

I've removed the film from the camera - I hadn't taken a single shot - and pushed the film back into the spool. If I use it again, I imagine the first four or so shots will be ruined, but the rest should be ok. What do you think?