OK, most photogs only shoot digital today. Easier, quicker, instant gratification etc. Yet, for what it does, a lot of people believe they get BETTER results with film and analog printing and they go that extra mile. If you are one of those experienced people, please take the time to write an essay explaining your methods and why you prefer it to digital.
WHY? so others can learn from your techniques, but the biggest reason is to arouse the curiosity of digital shooters who have little or no film experience and don't know what they are missing.
This thread came about from my conversation with an expert shooter/printer last week, who pointed out to me that he knew the results he would get with film 100% of the time, and that saved him time and money on the back end by not endlessly spending his time in post processing. OK, that is one guy's view, but a very interesting view.
Please stay ON TOPIC in this thread. We want to help the film newbies here. Troll posts and "why I prefer digital" posts will be deleted from the thread.
Thanks to all for taking part,
Stephen
What people "believe" is at odds with my experience, but not necessarily in the way it seems from the way you state the question. To wit:
What do you mean by "better results"? ... Hah! Another, longer essay ...
😀
I have been doing photography since I was 8 years old, a long 62 years ago now. There were no digital cameras then, I had no choice but to shoot film. And film was/is/remains mysteriously tricky and fun to explore with ... every format, every camera, every lens sees the world a little differently, minute nuances of exposure, chemistry, processing technique, and rendering bring about so many different interpretations of 'that which is in front of the camera' that there is no end to the awe, wonder, and learning that it presents.
And then digital capture came along. It is, first and foremost, a DIFFERENT recording medium compared to the chemical medium of film. And every sensor in every camera, paired with every lens, ONCE AGAIN was/is/remains mysteriously tricky and fun to explore with ... every format, every camera, every lens see the world a little differently where minute differences of exposure, rendering, and techniques used in doing so bring about so many different interpretations .... Sound familiar?
It is, more than it is so very different.
Making photographs with film is a pain in the butt: learning the film's spectral sensitivity, how to make it respond the way you want, how to process it, how to render it is a lot of work and expense. Making photographs with digital capture is a pain in the butt: the recording medium is almost free so you shoot a huge amount and then spend oodles of time choosing just the right exposure, just the right rendering operations, just the right way of tweaking what you captured into what your mind's eye saw and hoped for ... Both are terrific, superb, flexible, forever-more-to-learn ways to produce expressions of your vision, your emotions, your thoughts in pictures. And are fun in doing that despite the various pains in the butt they represent. So why shoot film when it seems so much more labor intensive and expensive with the cost of film, chemistry, processing chemicals, etc?
Because the two mediums see things differently. Period, stop thinking so hard. Film and film cameras are interesting and quirky devices with a huge long history of development; digital sensors and digital cameras are interesting and quirky devices with a much shorter history on a much much more accelerated and broad spectrum of technologies.
If I may make an analogy: Shooting with film is like learning how to pilot a canoe on a stream. The water may be fast or slow, but no matter how fast or how slow, the part of the stream that you need to know can be seen, ultimately, from top to bottom and you can understand the relationships between what is down there and what is up here, and how tweaking the canoe in different ways affects your path through the water. By comparison, move to digital capture and it is as if you just took that canoe and plopped it into the middle of the Pacific Ocean ... the depths below you are vast and unreachable, and what you do to manipulate the canoe can only 'see' the surface of that vastness as you learn to skim the topmost edge of the depths while forces beyond your comprehension drive the path you take. It requires a completely different set of skills to understand and begin to affect the motion of the canoe beyond the most surface understanding of the depths you sail upon. And yet ... At some point, the two mediums and the efforts of a photographer's actions to resolve intent coalesce and the hyperdimensional space of both of them collapse down into a different, simpler, more conceivable logic puzzle that becomes more approachable to your intent.
So, why do I shoot film still?
I shoot film so I can expand my mind and vision to understand the things that I need to understand in order for photography to make sense. I can see the bottom of the stream and know why the flow of the surface has done what it's doing. And with that knowledge, I can apply my understanding to what I can conceive of in digital capture, in the very limited context of making a photograph, and not be confused by the movements in the depths or the mechanisms at play. And with these twin understandings, come to achieve a few photographs that I like.
All of that besides the point that there are a lot of film cameras, and films, out there that are interesting, curious, fun things to learn and master the use of. And that ALL of them can make outstanding, beautiful, expressive photographs if you work at the effort with the intent and energy that doing so requires.
Film capture places many constraints upon your freedom of motion in the making of photographs, and in doing so, pushes your creativity and understanding, your skills, in ways that are quite different from how digital capture does. And for someone who like to learn and understand a broader scope of things that make photography happen, it is hard for me to conceive of doing just digital or just film alone ... at least at this point in time when the transition from the chemical medium to the electronic medium is still in progress. Doing both give me a diversity of perceptions about photography that enriches what I do to my benefit, and hopefully to the benefit of the photographs I produce.
Sorry to go on over-long like this, but this is a topic that's been on my mind a lot lately as I swap gleefully between my oh-so-modern two-year-old Leica M10 Monochrom and the delightful 78-year-old Leica IIIc that I acquired a few weeks ago. The old camera educate me in ways that are different from the ways the new camera does, and working both together lets me see and try for things with either than I might not otherwise have even thought about trying.
So – "better results"...? Hmmm.
G
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"No matter where you go, there you are."
