Over the past year I have noticed a great divide among photographers, both amateur and professional, between the film community and the digital community.
Who am I kidding, professionals don't use film. Or so they say.
There are many drawbacks to the film medium that digital aficionados are quick to point out. Aside from the "problem" of grain, there is the lack of speed, the difficulty of scanning negatives, the cost of film itself, and the snobbery of film photographers overall.
Plus you have to worry about cats playing with your film scraps...
Digital drawbacks are less obvious. Batteries give out, electronics fail, and equipment is always changing and ever more pricey. The images can look flat, a little "too perfect." Film shooters roll their eyes at the digital shooters click click click click click clicking away. "Those will sit on a hard drive and never be looked at again. At least I have prints."
Why the divide? I suppose we might have different purposes, one to document, one to create art. But which is which? Aren't we all working towards the same goal? Is one medium really better than the other?
I have been shooting a digital SLR (a "real" camera) for about three years now. Before that it was years of playing with bridge cameras, point and shoots, and phone cameras. I want to document life and capture beauty and intrigue everywhere I find it, and digital means have worked pretty damn well for me.
But film...
Film is another animal altogether. The concept is the same: splash light on a light sensitive surface and capture the resulting image. To say one is a physical medium and one is not is not accurate, as one person put it, film captures on plastic, digital captures on sand. Both have physical characteristics. But film is messy. Film has a distinct look. Film doesn't always cooperate.
"Film is tangible" is a cliché. Sure, I can hold a negative in my hand and kinda sorta get an idea of an image, but I can also hold my camera look at a digital image on a screen. I can print both. I can tweak both, either with a computer app or in chemical development.
For me, film is more deliberate. I can't easily take 200 photos and pick the best ones to share, so I have to be more deliberate to get the picture properly focused, exposed, and processed. Is this better? Not necessarily.
I have learned so much from using my digital SLR. The ability to effortlessly take 200 photos has taught me how to manipulate the exposure triangle. I know what tweaking aperture does, I know how much blur to expect from various shutter speeds. I can test virtually any ISO imaginable. Honing my skills on digital has helped me dive into film with fairly decent results. Am I perfect? Not by a long shot. But I'm glad I'm not wasting film on just learning the basics.
Instead I'll waste it on experimentation. I like chaos and unpredictability. I like sloshing around chemicals in a tank and feeling the magic of holding my negatives up to a light for the first time. "I have images!" It never gets old. I don't mind the grain, I don't mind the lint, I don't mind the imperfections. Film is gloriously fun for me.
But I still love digital. I love shooting in dark and seedy bars at 20000 ISO. I love inconspicuously looking at my screen and candidly capturing a moment without having to put the camera to my face. I love tweaking the triangle and playing with effects to see what happens. I love being able to take a thousand photos of an event just to be sure I got it all documented.
There are differences, but both film and digital have a place in photography. We should stop being snobs and come together for the love of the craft. "You shoot digital? Ugh!" should never be said. Neither should digital shooters say "Ugh, film will never be as sharp as my mirrorless!" Who cares? Love what you love and keep capturing images.
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