Ah, vacation! As photographers who shoot to put food on the table, it's exceedingly difficult to unplug. The temptation to jump into post-processing as soon as we take a photo can be overwhelming. The image is never done! If we just push this slider or that, tweak this or that, or crop here or there, the image would be so much better. At some point, though, shouldn't we be experiencing our vacation instead of documenting it? Enter the ultimate in quick and dirty memory-making: the 35mm film camera.
As I write this article, I'm at a beach house celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of my in-laws. While stories of times gone by have been liberally shared this week, the most memorable experiences for me have been observing those moments when a huddle of bodies seems to grow out of thin air, congregating around an unseen object, while a buzz of nostalgia grows to encompass the entire room. Without fail, at the center of that huddle is a photo album. The "cool factor" of these albums is automatic, especially considering some of them are half a century old, but the photos themselves are fairly unremarkable. The composition isn't arresting. I don't think any of them are cropped. There certainly hasn't been any post-production work done on them. So why are they lightning rods of emotional response? The answer is because of the memories and people we associate with those images.
Memories in faded prints.
On this trip, I shot a lot of film. I especially concentrated on 35mm film. Why? It certainly wasn't because the quality is better than digital. It wasn't because of price. It's because I wanted my workflow to look like this: press button, turn in film, get prints back. That's it. I didn't want a bunch of images sitting on a hard drive while I painstakingly attempt to tweak an image in post. Losing control of the image-making process has been strangely liberating! I take an image, then I drop my camera and move on. I'm not chimping a screen because there's no screen to chimp. My eyes are on my family. I'm not immediately on my laptop, neck deep in Lightroom while my family is in the other room playing cards. I'm there with them.
Why 35mm film and not medium format? Honestly, I took both with me: 35mm for family shots and medium format for when I'm trying to create something artful. Either way, once I press the button, I'm done. I get to enjoy the experience of sitting on the couch with my family, opening an envelope of 4x6 prints, and remembering our vacation along with them. That's the important part: the prints. Get those tangible memories in your hand. Don't let them sit on a hard drive. Force yourself to make prints. Don't get the film developed and scan them yourself. That's giving yourself work. Find a lab you trust and leave it to them.
Let go of the process!
Do yourselves a favor and limit your digital experience while on vacation. Give yourselves the gift of surprise. Give yourselves permission to enjoy your time away from the computer. A decent 35mm camera can be had for less than $100. I can't think of a better way to document your vacation.
Film is awesome in the states where we can have the TSA manually check it but I also have had many vacation photographs ruined on international trips where the film had to go under the x-ray scanner.
2 years ago I took MF film to Africa. Problems with security in both London and Paris. US, no problems...
I've had Portra 160 & 400 go thru the xray scanners multiple times to no effect. You really just need to use the guidlines. Nothing under 100 ISO and nothing over 3200. So no Pan-F, Velvia or Delta 3200. And you CANNOT check the film.
Sure i can! But I like being forced into it rather than having to exercise self control. It has little to do with my capabilities. I just dont have to think about it as the choice has been made already. Less to think about
Just to be clear... You're advocating that someone who wants to capture their family memories, personal projects or professional work, on real-world film made of purified wood pulp and silver, should instead shoot a compressed digital distribution format. I'm thinking that I'll prefer images made on Tri-X in my Rollei or rangefinder to jpgs in B&W mode. Hard pass.
The superiority of digital is subjective. Digital is certainly clearer, more crisp, and the fidelity to the original subject is closer. However, those criteria may not be the most important qualities to the photographer. Perhaps they like grain. Perhaps they shoot large format. Perhaps they shoot weddings and want more flexibility in the highlights. It really depends on the shooter. And I think that's just fine.
Yes, and some of those measurable differences cant be said to be "superior" if the objective of the photographer is not taken into account. Its like saying a building is better because its taller. The metric is measurable but may not fit everyone's needs.
So are you taking an objective stance or no? It seems that you're switching to some sort of anecdotal notion of what photographers think as opposed to measurable data. So which is it? Is it subjective or not? I have not been speaking in absolutes at all. Your point has been to claim digital superiority, period. Make no mistake here, I use digital every day, but I can say that it isn't superior in all instances, even in some technical ways.
Hogwash. Your definition of quality is not universal. A properly printed darkroom print is nearly always better than a scan of the same negative. This is particularly true of 35mm images which scan poorly with all but the most expensive scanners. Maybe a digital capture doesn't have grain but that doesn't mean the image itself is inferior unless the entire purpose of the photograph is to show fine detail, in which case it's probably not a very interesting photograph to begin with. A lot of digital buffs don't like to hear that photography is not all about sharpness, pixel peeping, and specs but but them's the breaks.
No, you cannot suddenly separate aesthetics and technical quality just because it serves your argument. Silver gelatin prints can be beautiful. They have a 'quality' all their own. You MUST care what a photographer prefers because 1. I never argued that film captures are technically better than digital captures (no-one here did) and 2. My original point was that I'll prefer images made on Tri-X in a Rollei or rangefinder to any jpgs I'll produce in B&W mode. It's entirely about preference. Yeah, obviously digital images are very sharp and clean with great dynamic range, that's wonderful, but that's not how you evaluate a photograph in a critical way. You evaluate the quality of a photograph based on content and aesthetics, and aesthetics cannot simply be "observed and measured" and boiled down into a pixel peeper argument.
You sound like a politician arguing their way out of a gaff, or like those people in my life who just can never concede a point. Your sentence by sentence response is such absurd obfuscation from just saying "yeah, ok, some people should just choose to shoot film because they want to". No-one is going to take your ability to measurebate away.
all this from a pretty innocuous statement that 'Losing control of the image-making process has been strangely liberating!'. There it is. Take it or leave it. Of course you can shoot digital in a similar process to shooting film, but that's pretty disingenuous since nearly nobody shoots digital the way they would shoot film. Maybe you do and you're an outlier. I think anyone that shoots film in these days of digital image making can appreciate the sentiment without turning things into technical wank about which is superior from a technical standpoint since photography is so much more than objective analysis of the resolution and noise... the process and the aesthetics of the end result matter, which i think is the gist of what the author communicating.
We'll have to agree to disagree. Of course I can shoot digital the way I shoot film. I just choose not to. I don't think you need to be a specific class of photographer to appreciate that. I also do not believe there's anything unnecessary about a path of shooting film. It's just a path. There's no right or wrong to it. It's like preferring to drive a classic '57 Chevy when it suits you. There are much more modern and efficient ways to get around, but that doesn't make them better if they don't suit your needs/mood/wants.
Pete, well we obviously disagree with your take on the tone of the article. In my mind you are nitpicking only to bring digital into the conversation to make a point that doesn’t really need to be made. In short, who gives a shit if you can slow down with a digital camera? I read your comments, they are fairly basic and I do not need to reread them. It’s your position that 1) that you can slow down w/ digital, and 2) digital offers superior image quality. My position is that yes you can slow down, but most people GENERALLY do not do this in the same manner simply because there is more at stake, professional or not. My workflow with digital is fast and nimble because I can get the shot I want this way and further, that’s what digital is all about! I spend an appropriate amount of time on the shot but I don’t quadruple check it, recompose 10 times and then finally shoot, when I can cover the same ground over the span of 20 shots in the same time it took to get 1 film shot and cover every possible angle for the shot that speaks to me the most. For the most part a film shooter is not exhausting a roll of film to perfect a single shot in the same manner as a digital connoisseur may take a multitude of shots in order for them to get the best results. And therein lies the charm and simplicity of shooting analog…which is the gist of the author’s sentiment. Whether that holds water or not I don’t think is up to you, everyone has a process and different strokes for different folks.
Right. Well thanks for the engaging contribution Pete, it was an exercise in surplus.
I got my first DSLR in 2013, but I continue to use film. Why? 1) My cameras, Canon A-1 and New F-1, still work; 2) Film is still available and affordable. With two film cameras, I don't have to decide whether to shoot color or B&W since I have one loaded with B&W and the other with color.
I treat my 5D III almost like a film SLR: 1) I turned off image review; 2) White balance is set to daylight (as most films are daylight balanced).
I do not see a reason to shoot film anymore even though I grew up with it, I studied photography on film era, was printing my own darkroom prints... The only difference between film and digital for me is that I do not see the result right away and the waiting for the film to be developed and then previewing slides was slightly different excitement. Do I regret to switch to digital some 12 years ago and do all my work and personal projects with this platform? NO. It is just nostalgic nothing else. Shooting film does not make you any better photographer then shooting digital. It is just a media form me. There are things which I could never do in film are which I can do now, and I loved darkroom work :)... Have a3 kids and love to have fun with them, and my 4 years old daughter is already pulling my cameras around the house and use them / even D3s size ones :) / and excitement she has from seeing what she is capturing is amazing... And she got the concept of how to use it properly very quickly, since learning curve with digital is way faster then with film since you have to wait for the results to come... haha... so people who still love use film great, keep using it, for me and our family I would never go back to film, since I do not see a point to shoot a film and then have negatives scanned and turn into digital files so they can be printed... if shooting film then printing directly from the negatives is what I loved, and to control the process of developing own negatives and printing them is impossible these days lives when times flies around us so fast :) Love to spent time with my family more then in darkroom :) since RAW+PS is my new era darkroom and I am in full control way faster and more efficient :)... just my 50 cents Happy shooting guys
This article has zero to do with shooting film professionally. Although, of course, many people do use film to shoot in their professional work, I'm talking about using it to document your vacation. It also has zero to do with film or digital being intrinsically better than each other. I just believe that shooting film on vacation frees you from a lot of the trappings of digital.
Hey Hans, I was referring to family fun time personal use here, no paid work... :) I do not even use word professional since it is misleading :) haha There is no trappings in digital if you are disciplined and patient like you were using film, it is just medium, shooting less is more, and JPG setting makes you slow down since if you do not get it right in camera you might just loose it like you would with film negative... for me there is no difference anymore. And you hear this form a person who spent all his savings on film gear and films during university, loved the film noise in the back of the camera rewinding and excitement from darkroom :)... no bashing here, I simply moved on and love it... keep shooting film, its great, for me digital made my life easier and better in photography :) Happy shooting
I was amused to see this article as I just got my negatives back from the lab after taking my Nikon FM to the beach. I enjoy the fact Nikon hasn't changed their mount for decades and I can take a couple of nice old primes on vacation and enjoy and also shoot them on my digital bodies. Nice article.
The main reason I shoot film is I can't afford, or justify the cost, of a (full frame) digital Leica M. Old film Leica Ms are affordable and reliable. I've been using my M6 for 7 years now.. so much fun.
I also like scanning my film and not really having to "process" the images aside from a little levels tweak..
Yeah, but without editing, digital looks like crap (usually.. I like fujifilm's jpgs), so yeah, unless you like the in-camera jpgs, you are forced to edit.
I'm planning a trip now where I'm actively not bringing anything digital. There are lots of other reasons to consider film. For one, film is far more archival in a passive way vs digital. Properly stored negatives or chromes will last decades with little-no degradation. B&W negatives could last longer than we will. I found an old box of family photos and was scanning beautiful Ektachromes of my parents from when they were young and they look great. Will your kids find an old hard drive somewhere that hasn't degraded? Will you CONSTANTLY keep up with DAM practices? Probably not with digital. You could make pigment prints of every image but that's expensive and time consuming. That's why all my fine-art and most of my snap shots are on film. I'd rather have a negative that I can re-scan at any time at near any resolution (or print optically god forbid) than a digital file that sort-of exists on a drive or in the cloud-somewhere... Secondly you physically have to disconnect from social media sharing. Time is always good for evaluating your own images, and having to wait for the lab, or hand process your own work is a good thing. You get to live with the images longer and really see which ones are going to stand the test of time. Lastly film cameras are FUN, and subjects tend to disarm themselves around them. When I shoot with my Rolleiflex my subjects are interested, and engaged in the process. Somehow DSLRs are seen as more threatening.
Roundly, YES.
The reasons why I shoot film are certainly not based on quality or superiority to digital. I shoot film because of the aesthetic properties, the often random results, light flares and other technical imperfections that come with loading film into and using a vintage camera that's over 30 years old.
I love film and I used to love digital, both have their place. And for me I use it mainly for artistic purposes, that's not to say that I don't take the technical aspects into consideration when I'm shooting. In fact, the way I approach my work now is perhaps even more technical. The choice of film, lens type, filters, camera type. Someday soon I hope to explore the many different formats and cameras from over almost 100 years of history offering so much variety and diversity in not only the process but the end result. Whereas I see digital cameras only becoming more technically advanced, more pixels, better low light performance all of which I personally find boring and lacking 'soul'.
With smartphones and apps like Instagram taking the main technical aspects out of photography with a focus on digital and #nofilter tags. The only real skill is available lighting and composition. With the excuse of using a rubbish filter to enhance a rubbish photo (mostly).
Last year in August I travelled to Europe, 13 countries and 19 rolls of film, with only the occasional selfie for a laugh and quick update to folks back home showing of good times. Got around 130+ good photos from the trip. I certainly don't regret shooting only film. I would definitely have taken more if I was shooting digital, but the result from my film stuff was certainly a lot different, but the experience of shooting and the end result.