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Here's how I know I'm old: that first photograph, of the reflex cameras on a shelf, sent a chill up my spine. All that beautiful hardware. Think of holding one in your hand. Think of the images they have taken, or may one day take.
A shelf of digital cameras is not something my eyes would linger upon, any more than a shelf of mason jars. Sure, they can take great pictures. Heck, mobile phones can take great pictures, too. But if someone says "Let me show you a few of the photos I took on vacation", it offers a chance to sit on the couch with someone and share a moment. As for "Let me scroll my phone through the 500 photos I took on vacation" ... not so much.
For context, I've taken quite a few photographs, developing most of them myself. The whole process was intriguing, from choosing a lense and a filter, to framing the photos and choosing exposure settings, to developing the film, to printing a contact sheet, to deciding on the 2 or 3 images on the roll that I wanted to print on paper. The limitations at every stage and the labour involved were part of the appeal. And when, every once in a while, a great photograph came from the experience, it was a little bit of magic.
But, again, I'm old. I guess those in the digital age would list reasons why that is fun and rewarding.
I think this is a silent constraining factor of photography. You used to have to do most of the work before you hit the shutter because every shot was expensive both in cash and time. Now you can fire it like a machine gun and dredge through the crap later. This added to the mental investment in the process and the mental investment in the device itself as you felt more connected and decisive.
You can and I do run my digital camera within these rails artificially. It's more fun!
(Edit: just checked my mirrorless - it's at 1875 shutter activations and it has been around the world at least once)
It is and it isn't. I have a friend who was a professional (wildlife, among other things) photographer in the days of manual cameras. He carried multiple camera bodies, and _very_ expensive glass, but his real secret to getting the National Geographic Shot (which he had done, for real; as in printed in the magazine, back when that mattered) was to shoot a lot of film. And by a lot, I mean a lot. Like, routinely more than 1k frames a day.
Which is to say, whilst those constraints were / are real, they are mostly to do with money, and those who weren't constrained by that got the best results.
Of course it depends on the subject matter. Wildlife and sports are exceptional cases. I recently fucked up a nice shot of a dragonfly because I wasn't machine gunning it (I have a Nikon Z6-ii which can really hammer the frames out but I don't use it like that).
But most of the good shots I take are good because I put time into them. Or did a lot of research first. Or went and stood in front of interesting stuff.
That’s impressive. I’m sure I’ve done this many shutter clicks in one day.
TLRs are really fun to shoot. You can also understand completely how they work just by opening the back and looking with your eyes.
When I got back into film photography, the first camera I bought was a Yashica TLR. Wonderful camera, and I love the stability that a waist-level viewfinder + neck strap give me.
I keep all my negatives because they're the physical artifacts of the experience, but they're really blown out of the water by slide film positives. Instead of the color inverse, the slide film holds the honest-to-god image of whatever you photographed perfectly. No color tricks or prints needed to display it. It will never be as perfect as digital, but it's surprising how close it can get, especially with slides. There's something visceral about holding a piece of film to the light and seeing an exact image projected right back.
What I appreciate in film is that with the development of technology, we can extract more information out of it, retroactively. This is a big contrast to digital media, where the information is coded as-is, and with increasing accuracy, we can only hope for a more reliable reading of the same thing. For one thing, film's analogue information density enables us to have 4k or even higher renders of the original footage, instead of relying on the versions rendered for their then-current time.
Modern sensors can get more information out of the same rectangle in the image plane than the chemical reaction of a film negative, close to the optical limits of the camera lens. The highest resolution single-frame shots may still be on (large format) film, but only because you can have a film negative that is e.g. 8x10 inches, and sensors that big would be absurdly expensive.
To be honest though, trying to squeeze every bit of information out of the optical system is not usually particularly important, and cameras that you can easily hold up to an eye with your hands are usually more convenient than larger cameras. You can get amazing pictures out of any film SLR or any digital SLR from the past 15 years which you can print up to quite large sizes with sufficient resolution. The medium format cameras pictured in the article, or some current state-of-the-art digital camera, will get you slightly better poster size image, but most photographers aren't making fine-art posters.
Twin-lens reflex cameras, view cameras, pinhole cameras, polaroids, etc. can be fun to take pictures with though, just for the novelty. Every type of camera requires its own process and makes pictures with its own point of view. Square negatives take a different approach to framing compared to rectangular ones and a TLR around your neck is located much lower than face height. With a view camera, you always have a tripod and each picture takes a lot of work, but the camera lets you tilt the lens relative to the film plane, which changes the slice of the field of view in focus. Etc.
Funny you should say it when I just finished developing four rolls of medium format film...
Modern sensors are indeed challenging the resolution of film, but only because we stopped developing scanning technology as well as chemical film formulations. A 60mp full frame sensor is more or less equivalent to a standard colour 35mm film frame, but all those photos taken on sensors with lower resolution are stuck at 24mp, 20mp, 12mp, 10mp, and less. But even a 60mp sensor can't match the resolution of https://www.adox.de/Photo/films/cms20ii-en/ so we have a long way to go in the digital realm. The largest digital sensor you can buy or (more realistically) rent is a 150mp from Phase One and that's only 6x4.5cm, the smallest medium format frame. Digital can't currently match anything above 6x4.5 and that's what will keep film going for a while.
Another issue with digital is the lack of latitude. It was pitched against colour positive slide film when film was still popular, because that was the pinnacle of colour reproduction (and still is) but it suffers from the same issues as colour positive film--you really have to nail your exposure. However, when you see a well-lit, sharp, properly developed 8x10 colour slide film, you really don't care for digital the amount of detail beats the crap out of the highest rest sensor. I shoot Fuji GFX100 and while it is an excellent camera, it cannot easily do what I can do with my 4x5 camera in terms of movements unless I buy a Cambo Actus.
I really wish camera manufacturers kept making film cameras, because both technologies, digital and film have their uses and there is no need to abandon one for the other, they can happily exist together. We don't argue that watercolour should be ditched for oils or vice versa, why not keep making both digital and film cameras?
The same thing will likely be true of raw files, as we get better (and probably machine-learning based) algorithms for decoding those into standard image formats. I wonder what fraction of projects currently preserve their raw files?
Except CGI, which were often rendered to a specific resolution but transferred to film. Restoration efforts or remasters then have to redo those effects, and often the source of the effects were lost because never archived and shared.
Also, some restoration of old black and white films with AI upscaling try to counteract bad early films or films that degraded.
That's not an accurate belief. Every film has an engineered characteristic curve; a different look. Which wouldn't happen if they were faithful.
The same thing is true of "raw" digital files; manipulation by the engineers is involved, even if the photographer does nothing.
You’re right of course, which is why Fuji sells both Provia and Velvia. However the slide is still the image. It’s not a perfect reproduction of the scene in front of the lens, but there’s no subjective choices to be made during printing and/or scanning to invert it. Stick it in front of a light and you can see the image with the naked eye just as it exists on the film. I think that’s what OP was getting at.
In the end, we still make pictures for our eyes that are more sensitive to green.
Most bird would probably think our pictures are quite unfaithful of what they see, and most bees would argue that the pictures of the flowers we take always clearly lack the UV patterns found on so many flower petals.
So it’s subjective all the way through the stack (Down to the brain’s interpretation of the signals)
It's in this digital age, where I seem to have an infinite roll of film, that I have come to appreciate not the look necessarily of analog but the scarcity of those photos.
I have medium format cameras, a few 35mm, and I take them with me from time to time when on trips for example. There is certainly much more care per shot since I have so few (especially with the medium format that has only 12 shots per roll).
For better or worse, the anticipation, waiting for the film to be processed, is something of course not shared with digital.
And further I linger over the photos more afterward because of how precious they are. And when you capture a "happy accident" — perhaps an interesting, artistic looking light flare in the right place, the film shot becomes even more precious.
“Honest-to-god image” isn’t. All perception is subjective.
It’s more perfect than digital.
Consider this about the original slide: it was physically there with the photographer when the photograph was taken.
It is stained with the chemically-captured energy of the actual light that bounced off the subject, in a form that you can visualise with your naked eye.
If that is not perfect I don’t know what is.
(Yeah, the dynamic range sucks compared to digital. But then some digital cameras suck compared to others)
Slides have three-dimensional form and feel, because light doesn't just pass through the layers of emulsion, it bounces inside. This is also what made dye-transfer prints look so good. Sadly, that print technology is no more.
I shoot digital, and only black and white film, these days.
(I need to build a darkroom so I can print again)
But the thing that really hooked me deep into photography was 6x6 transparencies from a Rolleicord. Velvia, incident light meter, sunny day, job done.
Downvotes on my earlier comment suggest that people haven't had this experience: no matter how great, practical and useful digital is, there is something mesmerising and emotional about a great transparency.
These days I get my visceral buzz from assembling my own simple lenses.
It's been over 10 years that film photography is said to making a comeback... just see the price of development!
I've been doing it at home with cheap chemicals for a few years (instant coffee!). The film is the expensive bit but you can usually find expired rolls floating around for not much money that work absolutely fine. B&W only of course. Colour developing at home is a pain in the ass.
Do you have a blog post or something for the coffee process?
There's a whole web site! https://www.caffenol.org
Well, it will never achieve the economy of scale it had. So it will always be more expensive.
But the same is true for art inks, I imagine.
> “They don’t pick up their negatives,” Cohen said of his customers, guessing that maybe 10 percent of them return for the rolls.
"Return"? How does this work? You can't make a print without the negative, so why not give them to the customer in the same envelope? Why would the customer need to come back to get the negatives? What am I missing?
... Aaah, that's what I was missing:
> In the digital age, most shops where people get their film developed will scan the negatives into a computer and just email the photographs to their customers.
Ok. So the question that remains is why? Why shoot on film today if you're not interested in keeping the negatives and printing yourself?
Digital photography is incredibly convenient and incredibly powerful; you can simulate any film in post if you shoot raw. It's completely understandable that some people would still prefer to own the whole process and shoot on film, but doing it like this, halfway, and keeping just the scans seems very strange.
They're after the "look" of film in general, and in some cases the look of the individual film stock. It can be hard to emulate digitally, although you can get similar results. Film can also be a lot more forgiving, gracefully rolling off highlights that you can usually still get something out of, unlike digital which is a straight up clipping of the values.
It can also be about the process. I know when I shoot film I'm fully conscious that I've got only 36 exposures, I've got a set sensitivity, and my film stock reacts a certain way in certain situations. Limitations can be fun to work with.
All that said, I always take my negatives, but it's understandable why a lot of people don't. I don't think it's a big deal.
Another advantage to film is the wide variety of formats. Sure, you can always crop or stitch, but I like to take 3 different medium format cameras with different aspect ratios when I go out shooting.
And waist-level shooting is very nice. I don’t have a digital camera with an articulating screen that would let me compare experiences, but my TLR is a great way to get different angles and shoot street photography without being as obnoxious about it.
On top of that, there are tiny full frame film cameras. Meanwhile full frame digital cameras are significantly bigger and more expensive. Digital medium format even more so, is prohibitively expensive for amateurs.
I use a film camera exclusively and almost never "pick up" the negatives.
I like 1) the look, 2) the wait ( months of wondering if I'll have any good pictures of my vacation) and mostly 3) the constraint of only being able to take a few pictures. I only have a few pictures so I look at them a lot and I really enjoy each (good) one
Darn. From the title, I was hoping this article would be about what is lost when you lean too far into “Yes, and…” culture and can never actually say anything negative about anything.
That’s "yes-man" culture or "yes culture". "Yes and" is about collectively building on a premise, but you can immediately follow with a challenging or conflicting contribution.
I enjoy making photographs on black and white films. Different films are something like different musical instruments. A C# played on a guitar and a C# played on an oboe sound different. The lens, the exposure, the developer and the processing ritual also all make a difference.
oh! the art of dealing with toxic chemicals for the enviroment, having no privacy if you don't have time &/or a laboratory (specially if you want to process color) & super tidy manipulation that don't have C-z if you screw stuff is so: T.T
/s
Nostalgia follows fading mediums. I couldn’t wait until I could use digital formats for music and photography, because of the promise of perfect copies and streamlined editing workflows. However, I also see the flip side.
My ham radio instructor (VE3XT, RIP) talked about how tube amps for audio were on the upswing at the time (2000s) because of the “warm” sounds. He was an RF transmission engineer, and it was bizarre for him that people were shelling out money for what was just distortion. A lot of aspects of his life’s work was seeking ways of replicating signal distortion-free, and he saw it going out the window.
I’ve come to terms with the fact that every generation will try to connect with a fading medium. This must be human nature. I’ve also realized that my life doesn’t improve when I pass judgement.
It must be that we see the tech from our teen years through rose-tinted glasses.
I fondly recall the computers and games from then but all of that objectively sucks today
If you can’t connect to your past you can’t live in the future
yeah & specially film photograph, there's something heck of magical! from being extra mindful on taking shoots, to a slow process at the lab, which is also a trance like experience... tho i think it's totally doable to replicate that in the digital world! i had a friend that used to carry a tiny rectangle, framed the photo & kept walking. i'm also used to just frame shots in my smartphone and let it go without actually shooting it... but the whole part of ruining a possible special moment of your life or just a good photo because messing with contrast in the darkroom can screw your shot forever or mechanical problems in the camera (like light leaking), wrong film etc., is just old tech that should go away
Or you know, if you care about all this stuff, just don’t shoot film!
I shoot, process, and scan my own film, both color and B&W, and I don’t have any special facilities. Just a sink and a table…
As for environnemental concerns, B&W film is pretty straightforward chemically, and the developer I use is just ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and phenidone. It’s non-toxic. The fixer gets full of silver, but I take that to a lab periodically and they put it through a silver recovery system. I think the environmental impact of the film I shoot is dwarfed by all the other things I do in life (burning fossil fuels, using water in a desert, taking and excreting prescription medicines, etc., etc.)
The article is about people shooting film but only taking digital copies or prints from the shops that develop the film, so if you were hoping those things weren't happening, well, oops.
Digital cameras use more (and much worse) toxic chemicals. It’s just that you don’t get involved with them personally.
I doubt most digital camera owners ever shoot enough to get to the point where there’s an environmental net benefit compared with film.
This is one of the reasons why I only shoot with secondhand digital kit now.
ETA to whoever downvoted me: I accept you think I might be talking made-up nonsense! But to get an idea of what I mean, I would urge you to look at why there are so many Superfund sites in Silicon Valley.
Can you quantify your claim, or provide sources to back it up, or are you just guessing? I'm not saying your claim is necessarily wrong -- it would actually be very interesting if true -- but I think the burden of proof lies on you to provide evidence for this.
TBH I cannot, which is why I talked of doubt in the quantity comparison, and it’s a fair point to pull me up on. My broader point was that people associate film with chemicals often because they have been within sniffing distance of a darkroom or developed film at school. They do not associate consumer electronics with chemicals, when silicon chip manufacturing involves some true nasties that you would not be able to safely go near to with gloves and tongs like a fixer.
It’s just my instinct based on what I know of the processes involved in manufacturing the main bits that are different between even a late era film SLR and a contemporary mirrorless camera —- displays, high density batteries, sensors, additional microcontrollers and usually two powerful CPUs.
The nastiest bit is the sensors, which are very large chips.
But given the sheer amount of electronics in it and what we know of the impacts of toxic waste pollution in Taiwan and other silicon manufacturing centres, and even just CO2 emissions, it seems likely to me that the contents of a digital camera are likely worth hundreds of rolls of film and their prints in terms of pollution impact once you consider all the processes that are involved in controlling that pollution.
The average secondhand consumer digital camera in my experience has shot in the low thousands, where that data is easily found still; it’s getting harder to find shutter activation data and it may not really be a useful guide anymore. But in the DSLR era it was normal to find secondhand kit with use equivalent to 50 to 80 rolls of film at the very most.
This is why secondhand camera companies and hire shops are so important, because they extend the useful life of what is otherwise e-waste. And I think there's a lot of delayed e-waste out there; people who own DSLRs but haven't chucked them because they are occasionally still better than their phones.