A couple of weeks ago I had scheduled some pictures, just for fun, with a local model. Nothing special and elaborated, just an hour outdoor to know each other professionally and start eventually to think about other projects.

It was the only cold and foggy day in a beautiful italian spring and, to be honest, I was almost tempted to reschedule.
Instead I carried in my bag my beloved Fuji XPro-2 and, to have some fun, my Pentax 67 with a couple of Ilford HP5+.

The model, Anca Dina Serban, was great and the diffused light, coming from the arches of the colonnade of the church front porch we used as set, was the equivalent of a huge light diffuser.

As usual I found a lot of differences between film and digital. The response curve to the light is one, but most of all is my attitude different when I have in my hands a film camera with a big focusing screen.
With film all become simple. I measured the light on the model cheek at +1 with the Minolta Spotmeter and did not worried anymore about the exposure.
The big focusing screen, without disturbing elements allowed me to focus in any point of the image without changing, even slightly, the composition to put the eyes under a focus spot.
Yes, there are a lot of focus spot in the XPro2 and the joystick makes very easy and quick to select the right one, but still there is a micro movement to position it perfectly and I lose the concentration on the composition.

Some things are really strange to understand, I am the same, but with a film camera I was guiding the model and positioning precisely every detail, with the digital I was following her.

Anyway you can see the results and evaluate yourself.

Technical details: the digital was with the Fuji XPro-2 and the 35mm 1.4, film I used a Pentax 67 with the 135mm f4 Macro and Ilford HP5+ developed in Ilfotec HC for 9 minutes after a 4 minutes prewash and to finish the usual Ilford Rapid Fixer.

Perhaps I’m a nostalgic guy… but as much as I love the results with the digital I much prefer my attitude with the film. I still dream a digital camera with nothing more than a big sensor in the back of an Hasselblad or Pentax 67, no LCD, menus, buttons, dials, batteries and an empty focusing screen without all the crowded information but just an easy way to perceive the focus over all the frame.

Let me know if you prefer the look of the film or the digital. I’m just curious.