At least they are making film look cool to young people--they will undoubtedly spend the most money on niche products.
Hell, Lomography, and things of that ilk may be what's keeping film going, and if that's what it takes, then I say, go ahead with it.
However, I know what you guys mean about not really seeing or hearing about people that are out there doing quality work with film, and not simply falling on to film for its assumed "old-timey" or "haphazard/you-never-know-what-you're-going-to-get" aesthetic.
$hit man, I know what I'm gonna get nearly all of the time. Anomalies are just that.
Going in this vein, I wanted to share a link--a photography collective out of Australia that I stumbled across some weeks ago.
The majority of their photographers (young people--late 20s and 30s) use film predominantly, and not just medium format, but 35mm as well. Color and Black and White.
Oculi
Check these guys out. Some really great documentary work.
Edit:
I think a lot of the problem may be that
serious photographers often stray away from questions about gear and process, and instead focus on the end product. I've dug up interviews with a lot of those Oculi photographers, and they will talk about shooting film, and their affinity for it, but they aren't outright about it. I understand this sentiment; perhaps they don't want to place too much emphasis on equipment because they think it takes away from the image (or some permutation of this thought process).
The point is, with a lot of
serious photographers, the fact that they use film (prefer it even) is not immediately obvious when viewed by the novice, or even to the routine digital user--perhaps, many times the medium becomes transparent (pardon the pun) because it's being used as it was intended, and not being forced into a premature state of visually antiquated novelty. F
Film used correctly, whether it be slide, color neg, or BW, just looks very
good--that's all. It reacts differently to light than digital sensors do, and the result might conjure questions from digital users about Photoshop presets and Lightroom Plugins---precisely because nothing really screams
film about a good film image--it's the
subtle differences that really set it apart. Additionally, the subtle differences are the things that digital has such a hard time with (highlight rolloff in C-41 vs Digital, for instance--digital would kill for it--seriously, some guy at Nikon would knife his mother
today).
Back to the point, I think we don't hear about better photographers using film because, on the whole,
they don't talk about it.
