[jaguar]

I love the grittyness of Tri-X, for me it is one of the few films that I feel I cannot emulate well digitally, thus I like playing with it. The camera is a veeeerrry (circa late 70s I think) old totally manual jobbie with a 50mm lens, it's not really mine but I am the first person to use it in years. Tri-X is pretty much the only thing I use with it. I'm kinda bassakwards with the film thing - early digital introduced me into photography and it's only more recently I've played a little more with film. Part of it is that with digital, once you've got the upfront (and admittedly far, far higher) costs out of the way, the pictures feel free, whereas with film I feel under pressue to get every shot perfect because it costs money to develop, thus I find I work far better with digital, partly because I can be as liberal as my memory cards will allow.

On the flipside I have moral qualms about digital manipulation. I refuse point blank to do any more than adjust contrast, balance and do a little cropping where needed and even that feels a tad wrong. With good RAW files you can do an incredible amount of manipulation in terms of colour balance, white balance and contrast.

One day, after I buy an island or two, I'd love to get my hands on a Leica rangefinder.

Rags are Popular Photography, Pratical Photography, American Photographer (i think that's the name, more recent discovery) and a french B&W mag I can never remember the name of.