Why do you use film:

Grain. I've posted this before from my PhotoKinesis.info "Glory of Velvia" gallery... Velvia 100 with 90mm elmar-M.

The lens provides wonderful contrast, plasticity and detail. The image cast by the lens is sampled by the film emulsion. I like the random grain which shows luminance-noise but not color-noise. I'd be willing to look closely at a large print with this grain characteristic (aside from the little hair!) Notice how the graininess displays the shades of purple, and also captures the glow in the yellow and the saturation in the pinks and reds. The shadow goes black with this high-contrast film, but there's no sensor noise in the shadow.

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I use film because that's what my cameras need...not trying to be silly here...I, as yet, still don't own a digital camera...
That being said...I love the whole film process...shooting, developing film, printing...
It's like Christmas morning when I open that film tank and see the images on the film...and there's something about seeing the image come up in the developer tray...
It's all the fuss over developing, rinsing, checking for any dust when printing, getting the right exposure time and seeing the final print and then the reaction from viewers of my images...

And you're right...It's hard to use film...
Knowing I have to get the exposure, composition, the timing, image just right when I trip the shutter takes years to learn...Yeah, I know even when using a digital camera I have to use the same experience but if I don't get it right with film it can get costly real quick and that is a great motivator to do it right the first time...
 
Although I have never been a painter, I imagine that shooting film is quite the same. For me (and I know this is different for others) shooting digital is like running my dishwasher, nothing exciting or intimate but gets the job done. If I had an M9 I might feel different, but I doubt it.
 
Multiple reasons, but the two major ones are:

I get B&W results I like better from film and scanning than I do from converting digital files. I could probably work to get better conversions as that's probably a failure of technique on my part. But since I get results I like from film, I mostly think "why bother?"

I like old cameras - I like using them, and I like using different kinds of cameras. There are more different kinds of old cameras out there than there are kinds of digital cameras, and they can be obtained at prices I can afford. Those old cameras need film, so I use film in them.

These days getting colour film developed (especially 120) has become quite inconvenient for me, so I pretty much use digital for colour and film for black and white. That suits me fine. I just have to work on reducing/eliminating the drying marks I get on my film. I've made progress on that, but I'm not quite there yet... (Oh, and I have high hopes for the soon-to-be released Plustek 120 scanner: my flatbed is OK for scanning medium format but I'd like to do better.)

...Mike
 
Grew up on Panatomic X and Ethol Blue. Waiting on budgetary approval for a pair of D4's and I use digital professionally for work here and abroad in the newspaper environment.

So ironically, I use film because I like the 'forced' limitations placed upon me by 12 or 36 exposures per roll and that which goes with it. Hard to explain really. The look of film (read grain, tones) is not so much a thing for me anymore and the 'slowing down thing' I find is getting too tired to trot out as a reason, for me at least, so ymmv.
 
I grew up with film and I am only 24... I stared with the high school yearbook with a Nikon N90s then an F100.... Doomsday came in the form of a Nikon D100 and I hated it. It was slow, laggy, and jammed a couple of times in really important moments. I shot my first and last paid wedding with it... It felt like a toy. However, it made it easy to update the website and that is what they wanted.

My father had a camera collection and like a bad stock advisor never saw the digital revolution coming. So I shot through his collection and discovered his Leica's.

The Leica's, specifically the M3, revealed a very simple approach to photography. I mean there were no settings other than aperture, shutter, and focus. No meter, but a beautifully manufactured and incredibly dense 50 mm summicron DR with goggles. I was hooked.

When my graduation college graduation came up, I had shot a lot of film and I was very poor as a college student hell bent on staying as independent as possible. Film is expensive... but upfront digital is way more.

I knew what I wanted, a small, well built, high performance digital camera but they did not exist. Right around graduation came the Olympus Pen series: a revelation. Upon holding with it, I just couldn't fathom composing via an LCD or EVF; Sacrilege!

The Oly Pen series with a good lens and VF was equivalent to an M6 TTL.... I got an M6 TLL... I figured it will last longer, and I'll just bite the bullet and pay for the film till I get a real job and can afford a digital camera that ticks the boxes. Not that I really mind... I could live with Portra and TMAX for the rest of my life...

However, I will never sell the M6. Nothing beats a true optical wet print on real paper. Nothing. Nothing beats the process. Dodging and burning is not like dodging and burning in the darkroom. The immediate gratification of digital is never as good as waiting for those prints from the lab.

It is a hassle to travel with film internationally.... but man nail the exposure and focus, and just wait a couple of days to see the results.

All that being said.... I have serious uncontrollable GAS, in fact flatulence, for the Fujifilm X100, because other than a digital M or some other unobtainable or outdate digital body it is the only digital camera on the market with a shutter speed dial and aperture ring.... A revelation. Can't wait to shoot it as my wide body next to the M6...

I guess I really don't know why I shoot film, but when a student of mine asked me if I knew anything about photography I unleashed my passionate opinion and tried to explain to him why he need not spend $1500 of his hard dollars on the an L series lens and body because the internet told him to do so. He told me he was interested in the "art" of photography, so I suggested KEH.com and a cheap manual SLR with a roll of film. To convince him of my logic, I am even going to let him borrow my FM2 so he can learn how easy the art is when you don't have to worry about sRGB color space, white balance, RAW vs. JPEG, 12500 ISO, lightening speed autofocus, mega zooms, lightroom, photoshop CS 9, and weather sealing.

Exposure, composition, and thought. That is why I like film.
 
I use film, because I have negative files going back to the mid-60's - and they have never been "re-formatted"- occasionally re-filed, but thats all.
I also started with film, more years ago than I like to think about (50+) and I am used to it.
I tried digital, beta tested RD1 and M8 and however impressive they are, they did not do it for me. Not so much the end result which is quite good, but in the process of "thinking" about a shot. With digital it is too easy to shoot too much - with film you have a natural limit - usually 36-37 frames!
I also like processing and the anticipation of hanging up a batch of films to dry and quickly look at them.
All this works for me - BUT if I had to go back and do this for a living - I would shoot digital, particularly color where I think digital can do an equal or better job than film.
So far I have not found digital bl/w very satisfactory - and printing technology still lags behind a good fiber based prints.
With something like 10 000 ft of film in the freeer, I dont think I will switch soon either.
 
I like my film cameras too much to give them up, plus I still haven't gotten this film shooting & developing bit down to a science yet & won't ever switch til I do. Besides digital camera's have too many settings I don't understand or care to fool with.
 
I will say that the look of film is becoming easier to emulate in post production, so soon that will matter less. Presets, people, presets.

I have several reasons to still use film. I feel my film camera is ergonomically perfect, and all controls are simple and clear. Shooting with my rangefinder is a careful and precise process, probably because I use film (I should learn to be like this all the time though). Finally, spending three hours in the dark in peace and quiet developing film is incredibly calming.
 
I grew up with film and have been using it for close to 50 years. I've used and own Leicas, Nikons and Canons, Fuji's, Mamiya's and more recently, a 500c (not crazy about it). I also have a lovely Pentax DSLR with outstanding color fidelity. When I'm shooting a wedding or an event, I'll use the Pentax--it's more economical and I'm not limited to 36 frames. When I'm shooting for the sheer joy of it and self expression,I use film. I process my own B&W and color (C-41) and love my results. I love pressing the shutter on my Leica or Mamiya and it simply works--it doesn't beep at me about focus points, or exposure or anything else. If the shot doesn't come out, I can only blame myself. I love having negatives of my images that do not deteriorate , even after 40 years or so. I wonder if in 2052 whether my digital files (or cameras) will still be around. There is a permanence in film that is inescapable. I sometimes feel sorry for those photographers who have never experienced the singular joy of "reading" a negative without the assistance of a histogram. Basically for me, film with all of it's accoutrements is just plain fun!
 
Why do I use film? Well first I must say that I have turned to film in the past year or so, in part because I discovered b & w images and realized that film gives me the chance to express feelings about how I see the world that I cannot manage with digital images. I say "chance": I am still learning, which is nice in itself. Film is subtle, film is textural, film is tactile, film is real. Using film is a statement.
 
I chose film when I was 19 back in '08 out of bitterness from an Ex-girlfriend who cheated on me. She always use a 40D on auto. I vow to be better than her.

One thing I didn't count on was that I would fell in love with Rangefinders 🙂
I saved (and oftentimes starved myself 😛) to get my current M4-P

Friends who use digital say I could switch to the X100 [M9 and X-Pro 1 is financially out of reach 🙁 ]. Tempting but the lack of negative, advanced lever, and rangefinder patch is off putting 🙁

So I guess I'm sticking with film because I'm used to it until an actual affordable digital rangefinder comes out that is 😛
 
I really don't know. Nostalgia, maybe, and just for a change of pace.

I don't have the best scanning rig (Plustek and V700) so it's not like I can pull all the detail out of a B&W negative, and I don't have any of the feelings associated with film being 'more rounded,' 'deeper,' etc.. Mostly I remember slaving away in a darkroom the night before a project was due and how much washing and drying fiber prints in a gang darkroom sucked.

I've got ~75 rolls of 400-speed B&W and 25-30 rolls of Portra 400 in 120. I aim to shoot them all by mid-summer. After that, I don't know if I'll shoot film again.
 
craygc said:
Because nothing consistently does B&W like B&W film...
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+ 1. The main reason for me too.

Above that i prefer the whole workflow: especially not knowing what you have got till development.
As a person who spends most of his working day behind a computer screen i also enjoy shaking some film in the bathroom! Time spend on computer for scanning and applying some curves in PS is minimal compared to the efforts necessary for getting a half way descent looking B&W picture out of a digital fiile.

Last but not least: I enjoy using full mechanical analog camera's like Leica's or Hasselblads much more than digital camera's with all their menu's and buttons. It's a completely different experience for me.
 
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