All true.

But that's not the point.

The point is that the vast majority of us can achieve results that are far superior, with less effort, at far less cost, now, with digital, than at any time in our film past.

There's nothing wrong at all in indulging ourselves once in a while. Enjoy away, and if the fiddling about with chemicals etc floats your boat, well, that's all to the good.

But it's not somehow better, except in a rather reverse-snobbish, "when-I-were-a-lad-we-'ad-it-tough" sense.

The notion that film was some kind of golden era, when we all took the time to create masterpieces from one end of the roll to the other is, for the most part, a fiction.

Doubtless there were some that did that, and they're probably doing the same thing with digital.

The fact of the matter is, that if the OP wants quality, he isn't going to get more of it by shooting film, and jumping through all the hoops you have to jump through, to get high quality scans, than persevering with digital, and making the most of that.

I think all this nostalgia is misplaced. We do what we can with the best we can afford, in the moment. No more, no less.

This changes over time, and the best we can afford gets better.

And the best that is achievable also gets better.

Ware, lest we don't keep up.

I think you have it exactly right.
Or you need a special reason.

In my case, I have 10,000 negatives, and no prints. It's my whole photographic life from when I first got my Super A in about 1984.

Snaps, most of them, but what price all those memories? I have absolutely no regrets about getting the Nikon, and I'm convinced it's the only practical solution.

Heyho, 7000 to go...

The staggeringly high level of admin associated with scanning large numbers of negatives is exactly why the cheap scanner options are no good at all if you have more than a handful to do.

Scanning 5 negs is a world apart from scanning 5000, trust me.

I've done nearly 3000, and with the Coolscan, what you're paying for (over £1k in my case, bought from the USA) is convenience, as much as anything else. A roll takes me about an hour elapsed, and only a few seconds of actual effort every 7 mins to feed the thing another strip.

And I'm lucky enough to have all the negs superbly organised already (not by me!!).

Then there's all the hard disk space for storing and backing up the 70MB TIFFs that come out.

If you're going to do lots of film work, use a lab that gives you TIFF files rather than JPEGs after they do the scanning.

But it ain't cheap. We've forgotten how expensive it all was with film!!

The cheapest way is to use a developing/printing organisation that, for a couple of quid extra, scans your negs at the same time, and gives you the scanned files back on a CD, along with the prints and negs. Some of them give you the option of not printing any of them, just developing and scanning, which is the cheapest of all.

If you've already had the film processed, it's more complicated and expensive, since the negs are now in strips.

High street photo shops tend to charge about 50p per frame for scanning after the event, so to speak, which makes a whole film very expensive.

I should declare my vested interest - some time back I sourced a dedicated film scanner (a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED), in order to scan my collection of 10000 negs going back 25 years. I'm about 25% through that particular project!

As I've mentioned before, I'm happy to scan negs for forum people at much lower than high street prices, just to offset some of the substantial investment in the scanner itself. PM me if you're interested in this.

Plug aside, if you can get the scanning done when the film is first developed, it will be the cheapest option, I should think.

I would love a K-5, but there's no way I'd buy one until this one's died down.

It does feel like Pentax has a death-wish, sometimes. Just as they come out with a world-beater, we get a monster QA-fail.



Who puts the filters on the sensors, Pentax or the sensor manufacturer?

Since there is no physical stop-down coupling between the lens and the camera, the camera can't tell what aperture the lens is set to. From A-series onwards, the additional contacts allow the body to set the aperture, but this can't be done with M series lenses.

There have been many threads on the forum discussing the exposure errors you get with pre-A lenses and the K10D and later cameras, using the green button in Manual mode to stop the lens down and make the camera meter with the lens at its set aperture. It's worth a search, but the exposure errors are significant, the more so the smaller the aperture.

It depends what you want. If you have the time to meter by trial and error, or with an external meter, then they're no hassle at all.

Otherwise, getting correct exposures with them can be somewhat trial-and-error-ish.

I sold all my Ms, precisely because of the exposure hassles. Ironic, really, since I bought the K10D largely because of the compatibility with old lenses.

Happy accident, really, I have no regrets.

Hear hear.

He reminds me of the Queen. She's provided many years of flawless service, but no matter where you look, there's no one around who could really fill her shoes.

I wish George a long and healthy life, of course, but I wonder if he's taking applications for an apprentice, who might one day (after years of suitably arduous training and malt consumption) be a worthy successor?

You just get better as the months and years go by, George, congratulations!

+1 for MSE.

I've used both the 32 bit and the 64 bit versions recently, also since migrating from AVG-free.