For those who use it, what draws you to film?

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<p>I've been into photography for about a year now, and I've recently come to the realization that I love film. It's not that I think it's better than digital, but that it gives me a unique look, and one that varies between each film that I use. I took a trip to Virginia last month, and my "best of" collection featured shots from all five films I happened to have with me (one film, Kodak Gold, just happened to be in my camera when I arrived, partially shot, and wasn't something I brought with me intentionally). </p>

<p>I wish it wasn't quite so costly to buy good film and process it, but when it comes down to it, there's a look I get from it that makes it worthwhile. </p>

<p>So, for those who use it, what draws you to film and why do you keep shooting it?</p>

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<p>It's a tactile thing. Same reason some artists prefer watercolor, oil or acrylic. Painters don't argue any more about which is superior (at least I hope they don't). It's just a preference for the medium and the process. Nothing more, nothing less.</p>

<p>For me, the darkroom is a zen-like thing, a soothing ritual, a slow dance of repeated motions. Dodging and burning - it's like tai chi. To me, digital editing is just a chore, a means to an end, not something I enjoy for its own sake. It's the difference between buying fish for dinner and going fishing.</p>

<p>It is more fun to me. I like developing film, and working in the darkroom. I find it more fun to spend 8 hours in the darkroom than 8 hours editing photos. I like experimenting with different films and using old cameras. I can't use a digital camera from 1955 very well. It is fun to use different films and learn about what they look like with my style. None of what I do is that time dependent, plus the little that I do that is, I work mostly in b&w for and process the same day I shoot.</p>

<p>@Lex: Artists do indeed argue about mediums. Most of the people that do oil that I've meet slightly look down upon the people that do watercolor. Not to mention arguments about different brands of paint and brushes. Some people are strict adherents to one brand and won't use anything from another.</p>

I like grain. I like the permanence. I like the discipline it enforces. I like -- no, I love -- a lot of the cameras and lenses designed around it. And I like the authenticity. For every film exposure there is one and only one original, and it is a piece of celluloid that was physically located between the photographer and the subject,and was acted upon by photons at that particular moment in time. It is not just a means of recording an image but an artifact in itself.

<p>Great answers so far. Something else I like is the limited nature of each roll of film. There is also something special about beginning anew with each roll, a set of uncharted possibilities that can be explored with a number attached to it. </p>

<p><em>"There is also something special about beginning anew with each roll, a set of uncharted possibilities that can be explored with a number attached to it."</em></p>

<p>I like that as well, Josh. </p>

<p>I'll add that the film gear I've acquired over the years is just too good to quit using.</p>

<p>I have several reasons. Since digital camera's first hit the market I have had four digital cameras give up on me in about 11 years. All name brands, most advanced digital cameras. I use the fifth in line strictly on auto now account account the function dial no longer works. It's not worth fixing. During this time and long before (1970's models) I have used two 35mm's, a manual and an a/f. Never had anything worse go wrong than dead batteries.</p>

<p>Why should I pay $2500.00 up plus other upgrades necessary to have a camera that comes close to or equals my Maxxum 7. If I shot pro, yes without a doubt I would jump into some full frame digital SLR. But the convenience of digital for me is just not that important for personal work. I do have to qualify though, I still use my broken digital for work. <strong>Digital's are not about love, they are about functionality. </strong></p>

<p>Then, as mentioned above, there is the aesthetics, the feel of film and especially the broad tonal range of film. And, the new films on the market are superb, giving you the ability to experiment with different looks in your images.</p>

<p><strong>""Digital's are not about love, they are about functionality."" </strong></p>

<p><strong><strong><em>Interesting observation, Sam......but is that NOT what the artist would WANT it to be.</em> </strong> </strong></p>

<p><strong><strong><em>Tools which are functionally better allow the user more ease to create the image.......which is what photography is all about anyway........isn't it?<br /> </em> </strong> </strong></p>

<p>The cameras only cost about $100.</p>

<p>I like the range, look, and rawness of film over digital. I like the fit, feel and construction of classic lenses and bodies. I like the challenge of only having 12, 24, or 36 chances in a go. With film, it becomes a deliberate act of carefully taking a picture. </p>

<p>I don't do darkrooms, (I did in back in the 80's). Now I trust a local pro shop to process my negs, and then scan at them home. There is a noted and often remarkable difference when viewing scanned film alongside digital captures. Digital is too clean, uniform, almost verging on plastic. However, digital works wonders for my commercial and product photography where fit and clean matters in a work environment of quick, instant and easy.</p>

<p>Regardless, there is a wonderful sense of pride and accomplishment when making a print from film. Unlike digital, you have to trust proper application of method and settings in hopes that the shot worked. I still remember seeing my first dark room images coming to life in the tray. It's that wonderful moment of truth, and and certainly not the same excitement from immediately gimping a digital.</p>

<p>There's a cover article this month in Vanity Fair on Heath Ledger. The article obviously features a lot of photos of him, including a portrait done by Bruce Weber in 2000 on presumably his Pentax 67, while the many others appear to be in digital, especially the red carpet shots.</p>

<p>For me, I shot a friend of mine in both as a portrait study, and she strongly preferred the analog. Granted, there were a ton of variables there, so I don't consider it definitive. But for me, comparing the two, I find that the analog has more depth, for lack of a better word. I think digital is very crisp and sharp, but it seems to lack a certain quality. I think some of it is related to the D/A conversion of colors, but its not quite clear to me.</p>

<p>Bob, I agree, digital is a wonderful <strong>tool</strong> . I guess I might explain the feeling of film like this; Take a traditional artist. He loves to paint in oil with true bristle brushes, not the new synthetics. He feels like he could never achieve the same brush strokes with anything else but the true bristle brush, used for centuries by the very best. You could never convince him otherwise. And, he would be right.</p>

<p>Love the negatives, (the bigger the better). Film cameras are cheaper. Also, the older ones especially are not so push button oriented. Love the old processes. While it might be easier to make a 11 x 14 digital neg than to be able to buy a ULF film camera. It's still more fun with a film camera.</p>

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<p >Ditto on just about everything everyone else has already said. </p>

<p > </p>

<p >The longevity of digital cameras, and repairability, too. Aside from expensive DSLRs, I guess, IF you can find someone who repairs them, they cost more to fix than what you paid for them so they become landfill fodder. Like this world needs more of that, right? The craftsmanship just isn’t there. Our world has become one massive Bic lighter.</p>

<p > </p>

<p >Digital photos being “very crisp and sharp”—agreed, almost to the point of being painful to look at. It borders on beyond what the human eye sees and processes naturally. That certain quality of film George can’t describe? I prefer to call it soul. Film has a warmth and, along the lines of what Lex described, a soothing aura to it I don’t find in digital. Digital is like high notes that can shatter glass. Same as with music. Sure; you hear things in older music played in digital that you never knew were there before. But to me, it pulls it apart to the point that it no longer fits and flows together the way it was meant to.</p>

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<p >On another thread today, someone related a short story about using his film camera when a kid came up to him and told him he was living in the past. I laughed because someday, if the Fates allow, that kid will have a past, too. Wonder how he’ll react when he gets there and some other kid accuses him of the same thing?</p>

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<p >Thomas: Glad to hear you’re doing well enough in this current economy to be flippant about $100. What’s your secret?</p>

 

<p>Something else I like a lot is getting the pictures back. There's something magical in reviewing your images all at once for the first time (I'm speaking more of color negatives than personal darkroom, where it's one at a time, but the same applies for that, just at a different pace). </p>

<p>about the comment on the kid making the remark to someone who is living in the past. always thought it was funny that many people who collect antique cars or radios. think it's "in the past" about using old cameras!</p>

<p>'</p>

<p>Josh,</p>

<p>Don't forget the history and the tradition of film. You can follow the history of film from its beginnings. I somehow feel lucky to have grown up during the days of film, when many of the greats were still with us (a few still are, but fewer each year). Studying the history of photography in school made me feel a part of the history -- that I and my fellow students would be a part of that history. Computer editing was just getting to be thought of as possibly having a viable use.</p>

<p>There is also something about holding a negative in your hands and having control over it. You can actually see it with your eyes. As an old librarian, I just can't imagine reading Shakespeare on a monitor -- not holding onto the book. There is somewhat the same sensation when I shoot with a digital camera compared with when I shoot with a film camera.</p>

<p>Mark</p>

<p>It's the only way to get a surface to bear a picture by having it intercept and absorb a physical sample of subject matter. In the rawest and most basic sense the only thing that fundamentally qualifies as a photograph is the light-struck light-sensitive stuff itself. Everything else is a painting or drawing of some kind; whether done by hand or machine.<br>

Because of their physical one step connection to subject matter photographs have a unique and powerful tingle factor. I want that tingle, that buzz, that horripilation, whatever you want to call it, so I use film.</p>

<p>Lots of talk about the "look" of film.......etc. But, these days most of us need to have the film digitised in oreder to be printed......not too many enlargers around anymore. So, now it IS a digital image......seems to me easier just to start there to begin with.</p>

<p>I will concede though, that there is something different about the old B&W emulsions printed using an enlarger.......but mostly them days are over. Regards, Bob</p>

<p>even a scanned film image looks unique to me. Its not just the grain, its the way the colors appear, the way the light descends into the shadows (particularly kodachrome, not that it matters anymore). The way it is true with both you and the subject. Not really easy to hide a flaw either with whatever you're shooting or the way you shot it. What you you have is what you have, cant change it too much in the computer, and what you shot generally, is what you get. Whether you shot it wrong or not, you're stuck with it.I shoot mostly slides (while i have some left, mostly kodachrome...), some trad BW here and there.</p>

<p>i shoot on a manual film advance camera. There is just something refreshing about feeling the film advance and the gears turning with the advance of the lever that is just... i dunno. Just so much nicer to me than with digital. Unless of course i really needed to get a second shot off in that 4second time it took me to advance the fim and recompose/focus... The camera is more less all metal, the lens is manual focus and the viewfinder is a split screen pentaprism. It just all feels right. And, when i push the button, i can feel the camera come to love to take the picture, and when the image reapers in the viewfinder a split second later, i know (usually...) that there will be a real image there. indelibly.</p>

<p>I love digital, but nothing is as good as a large format contact print. The film gives a safer record, a negative. I would have to spend around $30,000 to get a good digital back for my Ebony. Why, when film is available? </p>

<p>"Digital's are not about love, they are about functionality." --Sam Norris</p>

<p>If you need to believe that to make yourself feel better, more power to you.</p>

<p>"Take a traditional artist. . . . blah blah blah blah-de-blah-blah . . . And, he would be right." --Sam Norris</p>

<p>Except if he were wrong. </p>

<p>This isn't about film vs. digital. It's about what draws people to film and why people use it. </p>

<p>My reason's are very similar to Lex's. I like to handle film, negatives, paper and chemicals. I like the protocols of the darkroom - the darkroom is somehow a privileged environment. Even after nearly forty-five years of taking photographs and over twenty-five of darkrooms working, I am still fascinated by the chemical photographic process.</p>

<p>it's not a rational thing. I myself would be the first one to bring that up but what still attracts me about film is that the whole process creates much more a feeling of personal achievement, of having it done myself. I guess it's a purely fysical hands-on thing, maybe combined with a sensory thing. I mean, it's not like you smell of fix after a few hours behind a computer.</p>