The dangerous lure of film

As regulars may have noticed, I shoot quite a bit of film - mainly black and white but also some colour (with a rangefinder - oh, the horror!). It seems like such an attractive option for shooting. I like using the Zeiss Ikon and it is also quite small - I can easily drop the full kit and a few rolls of film in my carry-on bag when going away for a few days. Lack of feedback limits the number of shots I take and can have me covering quite a lot of subjects. The attraction here is the simplicity at the picture taking end of the process. Or large format, movements & the attraction of large prints with fine detail. Much cheaper than the digital equivalent (I don't expose enough film this way to make any digital replacement viable, not even a full-frame 35mm DSLR).

Then there is the processing. I keep forgetting what a horrid job that is. Endless cleaning & scanning, then a pile of cropping, rotating, dust spotting (one day, in the far off distance, I'll actually get a clean scan). The whole post-process is even more stultifyingly boring than with digital and time consuming, even with a fair degree of automation. At least there are less images.

The hours I'm currently spending on film process are making me tired, not helped by the dull work I'm having to crank out during the day at present.