Great photos kwlf. I’d never thought of it, but yes, a real camera with dials on top is more ergonomic one-handed, compared to changing settings on a phone. Suitably anchored in your case? An open cockpit saves hours of photoshop 
The tilt shift lens ‘model village’ effect is cool, and effective when used judiciously.
The parallel earthworks on the left of (Oswestry?) hillfort in photo 2 are interesting, but don’t seem to google to anything. Is there any local knowledge on these mystery pits?
The Leica CL looks very nice. I’ve always regarded the “full frame DSLR” argument as a bit silly since there is no physical reason for a DSLR sensor to match 35mm film – other than being able to use old 35mm film camera lenses but that debate is very old since the old lenses often didn’t work properly for various reasons, as well as not supporting modern camera-control functions. The APS sensor is plenty big enough… That said, I am keeping my Pentax K1 and a couple of expensive lenses (a £1.5k 24-70mm and a £2.5k Zeiss Milvus 18mm) for special jobs – like new scenic places I haven’t been to before, or product photography (which I normally do with an umbrella flashgun).
I have to admit that since I got the Samsung S23 I use that for all other photos… things have changed, and a few years ago I would have never believed it. But a big part of the reason here is that pocket cameras (I had a Canon G7X for a while) have lagged by years in development while phones have got better and better. I posted the G7X pics further back here and while still “better”, only barely so, which given the relative sensor sizes is really bad.
To be a bit picky I don’t think there is the digital equivalent of a full frame camera on the market
We’ve done this before. A high-end FF DSLR totally outperforms any 35mm film camera. Well, unless you want the “35mm film look” but then you probably also like the “vinyl record sound” or the “valve amplifier sound” (Russian valve makers were laughing all the way to the bank at “stupid westerners”, until the latest russki adventure which killed their exports).
Fuji makes a rangefinder style camera, the XPro. Unfortunately the newer and the lesser models with the same bayonet focus on the digital view finder, which I absolutely loathe. The prime lenses are beyond reproach, I don’t own any of the zooms (where a digital viewfinder would have at least one reason to exist).
Fuji is a renown company, about half the market for professional TV lenses (the other half is Canon, a tiny rest is Angenieux).
Peter you obviously didn’t read my post properly. Full frame otherwise known as whole plate is traditionally known in photographic terms as an 8Inch by 10inch format, not 35mm.
35mm didn’t become a professional format until the likes of David Bailey and Terence Donovan came along.
You can argue all you like about digital v film because that is a subjective matter. Some prefer the warmth of the film look, others prefer the reality of digital.
However, in terms of quality you need quite a high end digital camera to match the T grain stock widely used in cinematography and photography. And that’s with very little improvement or research into modern photographic film stocks.
It’s when you enlarge them that you really notice the difference. Blow up millions of T grains and the image still holds together when seen from distance it is meant to be viewed. Enlarge the millions of pixels from the digital image and artifacts start to creep in.
Then there is the colour range which is far greater and far more subtle in tone on film than in a digital image.
Lenses also from.the film formats are often much better than those for digital formats in that digital formats split their research between eg optical and digital zooms.
But the old zeiss and even Cook triplet lenses will give better quality result than their counterparts on consumer digital cameras. I often use a Nikon lens and converter on a Sony digital video camera especially for macro work.
That’s not to say the lens on many Smartphones is not good at particular areas such as very close work however it’s not so good over the whole range of the lens. It is a compromise. Just like all zoom lenses are a compromise.
The difference between a good professional and an amateur is that the person who does it for a living learns to match what they are trying to achieve and the tools needed to achieve it.
I am a film guy myself, before my engineering career I used to be a camera assistant/operator (for TV and film, but I liked film much better of course) and I still have a 8 by 10 inch Sinar – unused since I bought the XPro1 12 years ago. There was a long time where digital just wasn’t up to the task, but nowadays to work with film is simple nostalgia. If you know what you’re doing, it’s easy to get good results either way – but the fight has been fought and film didn’t win. Sadly.
Also one of the big advantages of the Fuji, you have inbuilt look up tables for the standard Fuji photography stock, so your jpegs look very much like taken with that film. No hassle later on with RAW on the computer, eating up hours and hours again – WYSIWYG.
Gosh, 8×10″ film has no DSLR equivalent (obviously) and probably no equivalent other than CCD sensors in telescopes. But it is also completely impractical. What would it be used for?
Hi Inkognito I still have an 8 x10 Gandolfi.
Love it especially being able to raise the front etc to avoid converging verticals.
Sadly haven’t used it much these days.
Yes for television digital is making more and more inroads. But until not long ago our Super 16mm Arriflex was still in demand for tv drama. But the arri digital is now taking over.
In features 35mm film is still in high demand alongside super 35mm as an originating source.
I’m pretty sure Panavision digital will become more used in the future especially with smaller digital cinemas.
George Lucas did try an all digital on the Phantom Menace but it didn’t go down so well with Star Wars purists and for the next they went back to film.
A number of directors have also moved up to the IMAX format as a capture medium but it really needs a big budget for that and a lot of outlets. Some thought the 3D IMAX might be the way to go as cinemas could be much smaller and you could still get the big experience.
What film cameras did you work with?
Peter should this be a different thread?
I’m afraid I get a bit over enthusiastic about photography film and tv, having started as a dogs body in the editing rooms at 20th Century Fox when Daryl Zannuck was in charge.
I used to do some theatre photography at university, initially using film. When I got my 5d, I could make prints that were viewable at twice the size. It felt like moving up to medium format. It was built the size it was out of tradition, and was more camera than I needed.
I agree that in better lighting with a fine grained Ilford film, a 35mm camera can do very well… but in anything less, digital does better. I went to a concert the other day, and a guy was taking handheld head and shoulders shots of the musicians from the back of the auditorium with a Canon R6 and a 500mm lens, shutterless.
~
Normally I would think of full frame as being 35mm. I’m aware that other definitions exist, but I think this is what 99% of English language magazines/websites would mean by it.
You can do converging line fixing in photoshop, lightroom, etc. If you have enough pixels to start with (and mostly you do, these days) the end result is exactly the same as lens shift. And while at it you can correct for lens distortion, etc.
I still struggle with why one would need a 8×10″ film. I have seen it used for printed circuit board manufacture (in fact much bigger) but that is not photography; that is projecting stuff onto photoresist. I would expect the lens diffraction (wavelength of light) limit to dominate long before the film grain size does. Spy cameras in satellites also used that, with “interesting” film recovery challenges 
Surely the biggest issue with digital video in cinemas was that 50fps etc made people ill. It looks very different to 24fps, but this is not because of film versus digital.
By all means start a “camera nostalgia” or similar thread. We already have one on software.
IIRC, Ilford made B&W film which had basically no grain as such. I played with some of it in the 1980s.
IIRC Phantom Menacenwas shot at 25P fps.
