35 years ago, as a reportage photographer, my Nikon FG-20 was stolen at an event. Now I could acquire the same make with the 50mm 1.8 pancake, note, in new condition for little money. The FG-20 is the smallest and lightest analog SLR Nikon had ever built. It was produced for two years from 1984 – 1986.
As is so often the case, there are wars of faith in photography. The analog photographers looking for the finest grain. The digital photographers who interpret brightness noise as fine grain. And I belong to the faction that if I’m going to shoot analog, I want to see grain, otherwise I might as well use my digital camera. The Ilford Delta 400 has a very flat fine grain. Combined with a yellow filter, I get an ounce more contrast, as this film tends to be lower contrast. Not to be compared with an HP5+ or T-max 400. Now it’s a matter of waiting for the film to come back from the specialist lab. And there it is 🙂 Nice contrast with fine soft grain

There are photographers who show in their published works how portraits nowadays can be made highly brilliant, modulating and contrasty with modern lights and lenses and enough light setting knowledge. From the 2D medium, a 3D-like impression is created that makes the model literally jump out of the photo. When you see such a well done picture, you think „WOW“, great job.
Some time ago I had the opportunity to see a whole portfolio of such work at a photographer. But I also noticed that I got bored after the 20th model, although the works were brilliant, but did not pay further attention to the thought.
Recently at another colleague I saw the complete opposite. Very subtle light settings much flatter and analog photographed. Typically analog soft, almost a little out of focus. And when I was browsing through this portfolio I remembered the colleague from before, only with the difference that I did not get bored with the less brilliant almost a little out of focus images.
Then I looked through my entire digital black and white portfolio. Sure great pictures but always with the analog B/W images I stuck longer. And then the portrait of Gottfried came about. Not brilliant and shiny with a lot of pomp, almost a little out of focus but with a lot of power.
I’m going to change my way in B&W portrait photography and go back to analog, though shooting digital portraits along for the customers, the customer should then decide for himself. For my freelance work it’s completely different, I want to go back to analog. Economically speaking, this is almost not feasible, because the pure material costs for an analog image are about one euro and 100 photos thus cost 100 euros. and if only every 3rd image from a film what will increase the material costs steeply. So economically seen an expensive fun and almost not presentable.
If there would not be this eye / brain soothing look of an analog B/W portrait against. Surely you could bend a digital photo in that direction as well. A little Gaussian blur here and there, a little digital grain there, a few analog image errors added and good it is and the look is finished. Clearly, it’s far too complex, time-consuming, and therefore far too expensive due to the processing time. I’d rather go straight back to analog.