Revisiting Film Photography

2011-06-13

After getting a digital camera about 3 years ago, I stopped using film entirely. And why not? Digital photography is mature and much more convenient than film, isn't it?

Late last summer I looked through some of my old film photos that I hadn't looked at in a long time. I was struck by how beautiful they were. Had I simply lost my artistic spirit, or was there something about digital photography that was inhibiting me? One one side I hear suspiciously intangible arguments about how film has a uniquely magical look. On the other hand I hear rational sounding arguments about how digital photography has met or exceeded the quality of film, can be made to emulate any film, and is cheaper and less time consuming. So which is it?

This questions lead me to give film another try, and to think about how film and digital photography compare. In the process, I've come to understand both film and digital photography much better. Here are some of my thoughts:

Film's biggest advantage is that it has superior sensitivity and response to light. For me, the light "as-is" of a scene is important. Consequently, I often end up shooting in low light or in situations with extreme contrast. In low light, film usually produces nice images. Under similar conditions, digital cameras generally produce noisy and underexposed images.

I also shoot outdoors quite a bit under sunlight. My film photos handle the high brightness well even when overexposed or when the scene has high contrast. Under similar conditions, digital photos produce banding artifacts in areas that are overexposed. Worse, almost all of the digital images that I take outdoors end up with severe color artifacts along high contrast edges. This is my most serious issue with digital photography, and has ruined many photos.

My favorite color films are Kodak Portra NC400 and Kodak Portra 800. These have outstanding and accurate colors under a wide variety of lighting situations. In contrast, I am only able to get accurate colors from my digital camera under ideal lighting situations. Turning off white balancing and setting color temperature to 5200K helps. White balancing, which is the default on most digital cameras, is unnatural because it cancels out the color of ambient light. Zeroing all settings in Adobe's Camera RAW software also produces much more natural and accurate images. Unfortunately, these are not the default settings of the camera or the software, which is problematic. Further, under the somewhat orange glow of incandescent lighting, my digital photos end up excessively orange. It took me years to really figure out how to get better colors from my digital camera, and I'm still figuring it out. My film camera produced beautiful colors with no adjustments from the very first color photo I took.

Despite popular propaganda, digital photography is probably at least as expensive as film for most users. As Ken Rockwell points out, digital cameras are designed to be disposable devices. This sucks because digital cameras carry a significant price premium over comparable film cameras. Film cameras often last a lifetime or more and they aren't perpetually "lacking" like digital cameras, so they don't go obsolete. I shoot with a 35mm Mamiya ZM, which is older than I am. It is still in great shape, and I expect it might last the rest of my life with care and minor maintenance. Oh, and I bought it for 35 USD with a fast, metal-body lens. The additional wide angle lens I bought was of similar quality and really cheap too. The up-front cost of film photography is low, and only gets more expensive in proportion to how much you shoot. For black and white, developing and printing is cheap and easy. For color, one needs to go to a lab which is more expensive, but still afordable. Slide projectors are still a great and cost-effective technology for displaying film photos. Digitizing film can get expensive depending on the which film-scanning service you go to or whether you buy your own film scanner. Digital photography on the other hand is still very expensive up-front. Additionally, expensive software is required for getting good results.

Lenses used to be made out of metal and had focus rings that turned smoothly and steadily and stayed in place once you dialed them in. Although not inherently a characteristic of digital photography, the fact of the matter is that the introduction of digital cameras also coincided with the onslaught of cheaply made plastic lenses with jittery and and unsteady focus rings with unacceptable slippage. These plastic lenses can be very expensive too.

Digital cameras have been getting smaller and smaller with each generation. But film cameras have long been small and inconspicuous and still beat any decent digital camera. My Mamiya ZM is one such example. With a lens, its about half the size of my Nikon D40 with a lens. The design of the Mamiya is professional but doesn't demand attention. It's great for candid photography. The digital Nikon isn't.

The big claim of digital photography you can easily and infinitely edit, delete, or copy a photo after you take it. Really, I usually just end up taking more shitty photos with digital than I do with film. I save time because I don't have to send digital photos to a lab, work in a darkroom, or spend the time making prints or digitally scan negatives, but I also waste a lot of time sorting through and deleting the excesses of shitty photos, finding the better ones, and trying to adjust the excesses of sliders to get them to look the way I want. Digital photography seems like it is a huge time saver on the surface, but it comes with many hidden and incidental complexities that take up a lot of time. Digital's one advantage is the instant gratification of seeing your photo.

With film, I know that each frame of film I shoot is an investment, primarily of my time, but also of money, so I tend to not press the shutter unless the moment and framing feels right. Most of the time, my film photos looks spot on after they come back from the lab. At most, I adjust the exposure on the odd photo. I am clearly aware up front of the amount of time film requires, including buying and loading film into my camera, purchasing batteries, having my film developed, and making prints or scanning my negatives.

Film cameras are generally very intuitive to use. There is a ring, wheel, switch, or button dedicated to each function. There are no menus to navigate, no screen to check your photos on. Film cameras are simple and powerful, and quality of features rules over quantity of features. This makes a tangible difference to how I shoot, and makes film cameras a more elegant and professional tool in my opinion.

I recently met a professional wedding photographer who required the ability to take hundreds of photos without interruption. Yes, film can do this quite well! This particular photographer uses 30 foot rolls of high-speed 35mm cinema film in his film camera using a special adaptor.

Kodak has discontinued my favorite color film (Portra NC 400) in order to unify their film production and make their operations more efficient. I worry that it might not be long before film dies completely.