North Park, April 2009
I’ve been asked to talk a little bit about my reasons for shooting film in this digital age. First off, if you look in the Tags ‘cloud,’ you’ll see that the camera I’ve used for the majority of images posted to this blog is my trusty 10D. The majority of images in my Lightroom library are digital. So, while I definitely shoot film, it comprises only about 25% of my image library. However, that ratio is increasing as I get better at developing film.
When I re-entered the world of photography in 2003, it was on the wings of the digital revolution, fueled by Canon’s release of the ‘affordable’ 10D. Reading a lot of info on-line then, the consensus was that film (especially negative film) had a greater dynamic range. Also, scanning a negative at 4000 dpi gave an image that had that increased dynamic range and also a much bigger potential print size. So, I went online and bought an FTb and a 28mm lens and shot some FP4 to go along with my digital files. I had the film developed at a custom b&w lab in New Mexico and was very happy with the result (in fact, one of the images I shot that year with that combo was this image). Regardless, black&white seemed better in many ways that black&white converted from a color digital file (of course I didn’t know what I was doing with the conversion process, so that had a lot to do with it). That first year, 2003, Peg bought me a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 for my birthday.
Over the years, and especially in the last year, many of those original reasons have evaporated. First, the best digital files now equal to or exceed the dynamic range of film; and second, digital file sizes now exceed scanned 35mm film so prints can be huge, and the b&w conversion process can almost capture the feeling of many films.
So, why shoot film?
Here are my ‘top ten’ reasons why I shoot film.
- It is just plain fun for me. I like the feel of a film camera (smaller, less controls to futz with, remember, and wrestle with), I like cocking the shutter, and I like to manually focus. I have never held a digital SLR camera that felt right in my hands. They’re HUGE, and I can never remember the ‘special’ setting to do something simple like, say, flip the mirror up.
- Each film has its own look, and I don’t have to do anything in PS to ‘get’ that look, all I have to do is load that film (color or black&white) into the camera and shoot.
- Doing the film thing gives me a Warm fuzzy. This is how I cut my teeth with film, and shooting film reminds me of that time. I don’t have to think as much. I can frame a 28mm lens pretty automatically. Most digital cameras have a crop factor, which changes the effective FOV of a lens.
- I actually enjoy developing film. It feels like I did something myself, with my hands. When I get my wet darkroom set up again, and I print silver gelatin again, I’ll have the fun and peace of doing that part as well. I really don’t like the look of ink jet black&white prints. Color I will never print myself. And once I start to sell more prints, I believe the fact that my b&w is traditional will set me apart from competitors. Last point with this is that I spend all day in front of a computer, and I like that at least part of my photography isn’t related to a computer.
- As good as the conversion tools are these days, I have yet to get the look of HP5 duplicated in a conversion from a digital file. Now, many digital b&w conversions can look great. I mean really great. But there’s as certain look for me that FP4 and HP5 gives me I have never seen in a digital conversion.
- Grain. When I want grain, no digital impression of grain is as good as real grain. Digital audio got better when they added ‘noise.’ It turns out that we humans need a little noise in our information systems. Grain adds noise to images. Sometimes digital images can look plastic to me, and I tend, when I process digital images, to ‘mush’ stuff around a bit to combat this.
- Continuous tone. Any digital capture (audio or visual) is a discreet, discontinuous capture. Pixel by pixel. Studies have shown that film, with its grain structure, gives a more continuous transition. If you want to know more about this, go here. With film, you don’t have the stupid ‘bayer’ algorithmic approximation of color; you don’t have the anti-alias filter sitting in front of the sensor ‘fuzzing’ the image as you have on DSLRs, and with film you have a physical artifact that, when sampling technology gets better, can be re-sampled at any time in the future.
- Film cameras aren’t computers, so they don’t depreciate rapidly like a digital camera. My FTb will, assuming it doesn’t break, give me great images ten years from now. My 10D, as much as I do like it, may not be working ten years from now or, even more worrisome, that file format may be unreadable.
- With the image in silver on the negative, I have PROOF that what I saw I actually captured, I didn’t ‘create’ it in an image tool
- Shooting film reminds me of my dad, and I feel peaceful when I have a film camera in my hand.
I’m sure this will evolve. Certainly a ‘full-frame’ digital camera (say, a used 5D) will eliminate some of these issues. But not all of them. I hope that film will remain a viable niche part of photography for as long as I can hold a camera in my hand. For me, this isn’t a ‘Digital is the spawn of the devil’ sort of thing. It’s just very personal.
What a great post, Chris. I especially liked your #10 reason. Heartwarming, to be sure. I must admit that I sometimes yearn for the up-front simplicity of film, but often find myself liking the back-end simplicity of digital. I immensely enjoyed my darkroom work and found it hard to deal with a temporary darkroom setup. I wanted a place a consistent place to go where my enlarger was always setup and ready to go.
Here are a couple of film pictures that I shot in the very early 80s. I found the negatives hanging around, scanned them in, cleaned off the dust specks, and posted them in a blog entry. Even now, when I look at them, I just have a wonderful feeling about them. Perhaps it’s because of the time that I took them. Perhaps it’s because of the tonality of the film, but they seem very special and something that I’ve not been able to achieve with digital.
I think that you hit it dead on when you talked about adding noise. Digital, at times, seems to be too clean, too perfect. I shot mostly low speed B&W around ISO 50 or ISO 25. Very small grain, but unsurpassed tonality.
Regarding crop factors and such, I think that is why I am trying to get back to full frame digital where a 35mm lens is a 35mm lens, not a 52mm.
It was simple, my friend. Nothing could be simpler than a Minolta SRT-101. One lollipop. One stick. Frame. Line up the lollipop and the stick. Shoot. Wait to see what happened. If your batteries died, so what, you’d just have to guess at exposure. The camera continued to work without the meter. Try that now!
Anyway, great post. Thanks for taking time to write it!
Chris: I forgot to leave the link to my old pictures: http://www.paullesterphoto.com/wordpress/?p=697
Paul
Chris, every single point is so well written. And I love the point about being reminded about your dad.
Every one of your pictures, that I’ve seen here, digital or film, are wonderful.
Yes, the Dynamic Range is there for digital however to me, and I’m not sure why, digital always looks “flat”. Again to me, a film print and even a scan appears more diamentional then digital.
In any case, it’s just so much fun, relaxing in the dark room.
Also, I just sold my Canon 10D I’ve been been using since embracing Film and Med format, that is such a wonderful camera on every single level. I found I never needed some big honkin’ 1Dxxx.
Paul, the image of your nephew is really wonderful.I hope he enjoyed it.
Tom, I agree about the 10D. When I take that out, I don’t feel like (except for the crop factor) I need a bigger camera. Now, that being said, the image quality of my wife’s 40D is visibly better. But that taks nothing away from what I feel I can do with the 10D. In fact, I tend to shoot with a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 when I shoot with my 10D, which has some barrel distortion. But it, too, has a nice feeling to the images it yields.
While I very much enjoyed reading your post, I have to confess that I’m following this from a safe distance. Unfortunately, I know absolutely zero about shooting with film. I am sorry that I missed out on that experience. Of course, it’s not too late; but I’m content with what I have, so I will enjoy posts such as this and not rock my boat.
CK, you could have started and stopped with #10 and that would have been alright by me.
Very interesting list, especially for someone like me who really never really shot film (with any seriousness) as I wasn’t into photography then, and as someone who has never developed my own film, much less smelled the chemicals to do it. I’ve heard the stories though….shooters who live in NYC taking up their whole matchbook size bathroom to do their developing.
And, too, I guess my eye isn’t trained enough yet to see all the differences between digital and film that you, Tom and Paul seem to see. Maybe I see it alittle, but not enough to be discernable. Then again, my palate doesn’t allow me to taste chocolate, wild cherries and tobacco when I sip some Napa cabs, either. *shrugs* Some people have it, some don’t. Honestly, I’m not sure I’ll ever get there. Digital photography for me has helped open up this new world to me and maybe the road will take me back to film a some point.
[...] “Stuck on Film” post today and followed a link to Chris Klug’s “Why I Shoot Film” post. Chris has listed some of the better reasons I’ve read for shooting [...]
Wow, you had your top ten reasons ready in no time, that’s passion!
I haven’t thought of how good it actually felt to do things with your hands, like developing your own film. I really miss that. Now, all this is done in the sofa with my laptop on the knees. Though comfortable, not quite the same comfort feeling afterwords. Thanks for this, Chris.
Good post here, Chris, of course I am biased as I like to shoot film.
Gary, thank you for stopping by. I appreciate your thoughts, and your work is just stunning.
There is nothing like the feel of my 30 year old Rolliflex SL35 in my hands. The weight, nothing automatic. You have to know what you want and how to get the results.
[...] coincidentally i’ve read several blog posts about why film endures, and the reasons strike me as immensely personal. intimate almost. #1: “Doing the film thing gives me a Warm fuzzy.” [...]
I just ran across this site and love it. I agree, #10 hit right betwix the eyeballs! Check out my blog, at the bottom is something about my start in photography 45+ years ago and how my Dad was the one who got me started. Thanks for your blog!
Richard, welcome. I will check out your blog tonight. And yeah, while #10 is listed last, it is not least important.
[...] Chris made his post already! Filed under: Photography Tags: Agfa, darkroom, film, [...]
Very nice post, like all the technical reasons for using film. For me it just feels right, that’s how I learned and to me that is photography. Also, I feel like I’m actually creating something.