Why I Shoot Film

If you pay attention, there’s a lot of “film versus digital” talk out there in the photography world.  The digital camp seems pretty adamant about trying to kill off the film medium, for whatever reason.  Maybe they are imagining (or observing) some sort of external criticism of their medium and are therefore trying to argue for a default superiority.  And I don’t mean to generalize.  Some digital shooters are simply working in the format as a choice, for whatever reason, and are entirely non-confrontational about it.  But continuing with my generalizations that I don’t really want to make, their preference is probably driven by supposed cost savings and volume.  The classic argument is that photos have suddenly become free.  That you have unlimited film.  That your only limit to your creativity and shooting ability is the size of your hard drive.To be frank, I don’t like digital photography, but I’ve tried to avoid confrontation on the matter.  I’ve always stated that this comes down to my own personal preferences, and that digital photos are a perfectly legitimate way to photograph.  But I also fear that this claim means that film and digital are equivalent, and that’s just not true.

Let’s start by noting two obvious differences in the processes.  First, with film, there’s an added degree of separation between you and the results of your work.  With the LCD review screens of digital cameras, you have more opportunities to instantly review and correct your work after a shot.  This does two things.  First, it devalues the mistakes you make, so that you’re rapidly throwing darts at a bulls-eye you’re eventually sure to get by the law of averages, rather than taking careful aim with each of your three darts that are all the rules of the game say you’re getting.  Second, it repeatedly severs the connection you’re trying to make with your subject, whether it’s scenery or another human being.

Secondly, and perhaps more effective at driving my point home, loading film takes some sort of time and effort, whether it’s loading a new roll of 35mm in a motor-driven camera, or taking a minute to load each individual sheet of film in a large format holder, then making notes as to which holder has which emulsion in it.  There is a self-imposed window of opportunity before your work gets interrupted by the need to change your film.  To be fair, this boundary exists in digital, but you usually can’t fill a memory card these days before your shooting is done.

Once you start placing this boundary on your work, you have to impose limits on yourself.  Every shutter click is another step closer to having to change your film roll, or you could even have to change your film holder after every exposure.  You’re now invested in some degree in every single shot.  And I’m being careful to frame this investment in terms of your roll of film rather than the way most do, which is by the price of film.  I could run through the numbers of how, by looking at total costs, digital and film photography could cost you similar amounts of money.  Or, I could frame it in terms of how much each individual exposure costs in dollars and cents.  I don’t want to do that, though, because before long, you start just buying film at certain intervals to keep a properly stocked refrigerator, and you start watching your frame counter much more than your wallet.

Furthermore, your investment doesn’t stop at the camera itself.  Though it’s probably not a conscious thought at the time, the exposures you make on film are only part of a much larger process.  To make a photograph, I have to decide which film I want to use for my subject, load this film into the camera, make the exposure, remove the film, set it aside until I’m ready to process it (perhaps forgetting its content in this time), load it into a light-tight contraption, stand over the sink with it while I subject it to a series of chemicals, hang it to dry, load it into a different contraption, and then either scan it, or—even better—throw it into an entirely new machine that will enlarge the image onto photo paper whose fate it is to be subjected to even more chemistry and ultimately be displayed (or stored) in a very real physical space for all eternity.  Granted, working on a select digital image in Photoshop and defining its location in the sea of similar bytes of data is also real and necessary work, but to me this work is tedious and very impersonal.  Having your fingertips on a keyboard and mouse is decidedly not the same as having your fingertips handle the edges of a piece of film.

To be fair, there are photographs that I’ve made that I would not have made had I been shooting film.  This shot is a prime example:

I made about twelve rapid-fire exposures to get this perfect moment where Mao was yawning.  I could have done the same thing with some film, but I wouldn’t have wanted to devote an entire third of a roll just to get a cat photograph that was unlikely to succeed anyway.  I was also very free to alter the tones of the photo, since there was no negative to which I felt I had to be faithful.

Contrast that photo with this one:

I only had two rolls of 120 film with me, so I had to choose at most twenty-four moments to represent the entire night.  Light was low, so I knew I was going to have to push the film in processing, so I was going to have higher-contrast images with less shadow detail.  To this day, I’m not a master at focusing my Hasselblad, especially with any sort of speed.  The entire experience was, to some degree, a gamble.  However, I consider the photograph to be much more of a personal success.  I believe that the personal connection and investment in the photograph is forever linked with the result, leading to an ultimately more pleasing effect.

So now, despite the fact that I don’t have unlimited shots at my disposal and I can’t correct my settings on the fly, I ultimately consider myself a better photographer who is more in touch with the art form than I ever would have been had I never diverged from digital.