London and Kodachrome

This picture was taken in London. It's another one from that trip. It's a tribute to my favorite photographer, Cartier-Bresson, the man that invented the "decisive moment". The place in time and space that makes a picture, no before, not after, not everywhere else. Just that "decisive moment". The fact is that i have much more pictures but i don't use them because i love my old gear, i love films, specially Velvia. And know they have it on 100 ISO. So, most of my pictures are just good to to be seen in a wall with the background noise of the cooling fan. 

It's hard today with all the electronics and lighting speed improvements in sensors and software to understand why films are so important. One chooses the film in function of the picture. I used to choose film, and still do, based on my mood, the weather, the subject and the picture i wanted. Today we lost that. We can still do some tricks, make some Photoshop and get "better" results, even better than real photos looking like photos. 

You guessed, i don't like using Photoshop, i even don't allow the guys in revealing my pictures to correct casts or exposure. And i stay by their side when they print the negatives. Also framing makes me nervous. You know, in some formats the 35mm negative must be cut to fit. With slides there is no such problem. But the framing still annoys me. I live in permanent fear of damaging one of my precious photos. That's why i will scan them, someday... 

Back to films. Another of my loves is black and white. For that i only use Ilford 400. I just love the grain. I there is need for a faster one i will use one faster, but it's not usual. If it's dark then the photo must be dark also, not correctly exposed. It's better to use spot metering, spot lighting and a fast 50 mm fixed focal lens. My favorite for all black and white is a 50mm f1.8. Another one i love to use is wide angle zoom. I don't use teles much, don't like them now. I used to, but now i think is just better to get close, use my feet. 

People just don't realize one thing that was important until now, and still is, but differently, that film makes the fashion and the way we live and remember. Just looking at old pictures, we can understand why the fashion colours where those, why the designs where that. Films always have a personality that changed over time. And fashion changed with them. Today is more about software filters and plugins and special effects, but the end result is the same. the photographer's tools are the ones saying what we will like. 

I must finish remembering the last great film from Kodak. I also used Kodak films, they used to have some interesting professional films. The one i an talking about is Kodachrome. There are song about when they discontinued this film. People just bought buckets of those, emptied fridges and stuffed them inside. Just listen to Simon and Garfunkel's "Kodachrome". No CMOS sensor or great plugin will ever do that.