So I got a couple phone calls and Instant Messenger sessions from a reader, and nagging from my family bugging me about not updating this since Christmas. Sheesh, it hasn’t been that long.
The nagging question that I’ve been asked to answer has been ‘Why is film photography important when I have this cool digital camera?’
I guess I wasn’t overly clear in the blog post about Golden Age of Photography.
First off, digital is great. Quick delivery, instant gratification, you know quickly if you screwed up, ability to print without a darkroom, all kinds of good things. There’s nothing wrong with that. I salivate over the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Nikon D700 like most of the population. Sometime soon, I’ll have one.
So with that said, who gives a rat’s patootie about film?
I do. Here’s why.
1. Film has it’s own look. Develop film for fine grain or enlarged grain. Torture it to make it look funny. Film is just darn flexible in developing some killer good looks.
Yes, digital is flexible too. That’s not the point. This isn’t a competition. I think people have lost sight of that reality. We as a species are obsessed with the evaluation of who won. Why? Does it really matter and what is a win in this case? Is the win the abandonment of one of the most important technical advances in the history of mankind? I think not. This isn’t a game where one technology needs to be taken out.
See, the real answer is that film photography added to the body of artwork established by painters, writers, and other artists, it didn’t supplant those methods. It augmented them.
2. Film is fun. There’s this magic of having your picture just come up from nothing. That’s cool. No reason to abandon that.
3. Film, especially slide film, forces understanding of exposure in a way that knocking out bracket shots in a digital camera never will. That precision attained by using slide film or precisely exposing negatives reinforces technique and knowledge. Yes, you can get this in digital, though most people I know aren’t that disciplined in digital for some reason. It is forced upon you with slide films because the exposure latitude is so narrow and there is a cost of developing film that imposes a rigor.
4. There are many outstanding visual artists still using film. There are many more behind us that we hope will begin to use film. We hope that media will stay commonly available. That will only happen if people keep using film.
5. Film is inexpensive. Yep, it costs more than the electrons in a digital body, but film cameras are cheaper to get into a good 35mm slr or medium format camera. Pinhole cameras can be totally free. With an inexpensive film camera and a lens or two, a lot of experimentation could be done. Yes, if you shoot enough, at some point the cost can overtake the cost of a digital SLR. Again, this isn’t a comparison of the two technologies.
6. Film can be used in a hybrid method of developing film then scanning for digital printing. Pretty cool. You can have real film with the flexibility of editing and printing digitally.
7. Photography, like any discipline, is best done with the best tool for the job. Carpenters instinctively know not to use a hammer for every task. Photographers seem to have difficulty with that.
So, those are some virtues of film – some that are important to me. So go get some film and shoot it.
Back to Christmas – I got John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ and Miles Davis’ ‘Birth of the Cool’ I can’t believe I didn’t have those already. BTW, at johncoltrane.com, ‘A Love Supreme’ is the first video showing on the site. Incredible. Go listen to it.
