Look, if you want to shoot film, shoot film. If you like the look overexposed Polaroids have, shoot overexposed Polaroids, or shoot with your lens not attached to your camera body, or whatever floats your boat, artistically. Just don't argue that other people are somehow not "real" photographers just because they don't like what you like, and don't use the "it's good because it's what was on the market the specific decade of my twenties" argument.
If you think that is pathetic, you should see how much time photographers spend arguing about who is a real photographer because of the size of the digital sensor.
It all boils down to about one or two stops, but by how people argue about it you'd think one was shooting with a Fisher Price Barbie camera and the other a Large format Hasselblad.
Honestly photography is all about: Skill (practice), luck, and branding in that order. You can improve your "luck" by being at interesting locations or events for your style, but ultimately sometimes you get the shot and sometimes you don't.
Well, this is just generally any industry. Take a gander at /r/programming sometimes. It's a whole bunch of mediocre people arguing about things they've never done, while the people who really know what they are doing are nowhere to be found because they're too busy getting shit done.
It's not worth arguing about but I have three APS-C sensor cameras and I would love to have a stop or two of performance. Being able to shoot on the evening streets at 1/60th vs 1/15th of a second? Yes please! I would say for most people, yeah it doesn't matter. But for more than a few that performance increase is very, very noticeable.
That's fine, nobody is saying there isn't a one or two stop difference.
I just said people spend an insane amount of time arguing who is a "real" photographer because of that difference. Like "you cannot possibly shoot wedding on APS-C!!!" until it became the most popular format for weddings, and now it is "you cannot possibly shoot wedding with m43!!!"
If you look at digital sensors in a historical perspective, an APS-C camera sold today is better than a full frame camera sold in 2009. Let that sink in. A m43 sensor sold today is better than APS-C sensors sold even in 2011 (by Canon).
So if people aren't "real" photographers today because they have a smaller sensor, then by logical extension everyone who shot digital in 2004-2010 isn't a real photographer either.
It's possible that the "you can't shoot weddings on an APS-C" argument may be a simplified version of "none of the APS-C cameras currently available have the features a wedding photographers need". An example of such a feature is redundant memory cards. Then as more professional APS-C cameras were introduced the argument became invalid.
And how do you define "better sensor"? I can always find a case where a "crap sensor" beats a "good sensor". As an example, if you're shooting a closeup of a helicopter in flight, the sensor in a $150 point-and-shoot will outperform a $5000+ Canon 1Dx, just because of the shutter design. And the shutter is an integral part of the sensor for CCD chips.
>> I just said people spend an insane amount of time arguing who is a "real" photographer because of that difference. Like "you cannot possibly shoot wedding on APS-C!!!" until it became the most popular format for weddings, and now it is "you cannot possibly shoot wedding with m43!!!"
The thing is that you can say this for just about anything where someone can take himself (or herself) a little too seriously, whether it be cameras. coffee, wine, vinyl records, operating systems or programming languages.
Myself, I buy cameras that suit my shooting use cases, and more often than not, a small sensor is perfectly fine. I went from using an APS-C sensor to using 1" and 2/3" sensors, and have been perfectly happy with my transition, although I'm sure some camera purists would scoff at my choices.
I shoot film, mostly black and white, on a regular basis[1]. I got into it a year ago January after shooting digitally[2] for the last several years before that. There is a lot to be said for working in the medium and printing optically in a wet darkroom. It's made me a much more patient, slower photographer. It's made me think more about my composition. And, it's also given me a much better sense of camaraderie than I get with a digital camera (I work in a public darkroom, and I've become good friends with a number of other regulars).
If this sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend picking up a film camera and giving it a shot. I put together a blog post a few months back describing a full film kit you can put together for under $200, complete with film developing: http://www.ishootfilm.org/blog/2014/10/18/10-the-best-film-c...
And, if you are interested in learning more about developing your own film and making your own prints, I have a list of darkrooms (and photo labs) here: http://www.ishootfilm.org/businesses
[1] Like, 'every day' regular.
[2] I still do. I took a couple hundred photos at a friend's birthday party last night with my digital Fuji X100S.
Some would call this hipster pretentiousness. I wouldn't though. I think overall we're seeing a growing trend, or growing condition I believe would be more apt, where people are searching for substance at a time where the digital/modern life has removed or cheapened it.
Yep. I remember a nice TED talk about this lady who would go out of her way to send physical letters to people now that communications is so simple, effortless and instantaneous.
This is a recurring thing– whenever things get faster, there is an artfulness that frees up in being deliberately slow. Pretentious maybe, if you pretend that it's somehow "better". But it can also be really heartfelt.
> I think overall we're seeing a growing trend, or growing condition I believe would be more apt, where people are searching for substance at a time where the digital/modern life has removed or cheapened it.
That wasn't an appeal to tradition, I don't know where you got that.
And besides, it is more than that. We are human beings, our brains are designed to interact with physical objects, and when you move all of the physical objects like CDs, photos, DVDs, etc into an existence of pure information, what you end up missing is that satisfaction of holding a physical object in your hand and experiencing it with all your senses, like we did with jewels or tools centuries ago.
Why has digital life removed substance? Today I can talk with my friends, who are scattered all around the globe, all day, every day, in real time. I get lessons from experts on things that interest me, for free, whenever I want them, without having to lift a finger. I can call my friends at a moment's notice and we get together and do a whole host of things that would be pretty much impossible twenty years ago.
How did digital life cheapen substance? Because I can no longer get on stage and touch the actors in movies? When it comes to photographs, specifically, the difference between the phone screen and a piece of paper is a hell of a lot less than the actual thing in the photograph and the photograph itself. If anything, your argument is against photography as a whole.
Because you can't view digital content without a computer. At a fundamental level, your interaction with it must be mediated with the aid of a third party. Nobody thinks digital lacks utility but it is inherently ephemeral.
If I give you an old photograph to look at, then all you need to look at it are your eyes and whatever light happens to be about. If I hand you an SD card, you need to go and find some sort of computer to stick it into, as well as a source of power for said computer, although I think that latter consideration might cease to matter in a couple of decades.
I have no idea about the how, but it's not hard to understand that bits are fragile and totally dependent on a huge network of many technologies.
I spent last week in Europe looking at ancient buildings and incredible art. Some of this stuff is literally millennia old - but people are still queuing around the block to see it.
If you build something out of atoms, that sucker stays there - not quite forever, but some combinations of atoms can easily outlast many human lifetimes.
Compare that with bits, where file formats, storage media, operating systems, and basic hardware all keep changing and content preservation is hit and miss. (I have video files from the late 1990s that are unplayable now.)
Code is even more fragile, especially if it's heavily OS- or framework-specific.
So people like physical stuff. It can survive without power or a reader device. That makes it more reassuring than a transient digital content blip that's gone before your kids have had a chance to experience it.
Here's another niche of photographer: those of use who capture on the digital medium and process on a computer, but refuse to display our photographs online to be seen on a screen.
My display medium is print even though my capture is digital. I print almost exclusively on large format paper. The output medium is what I want to control in my photographic process.
I can appreciate this position since the digital screen people view photos on can't be controlled by the content creator and screens vary a ton (in resolution, contrast, color).
Just like and even moreso than vinyl, there are sound, non-"hipster" reasons one might choose to shoot film.
The major one that keeps many artists coming back is medium/large format. It's much much cheaper to get an extremely high resolution photograph on film. Medium format is something like 100 megapixels, and it costs about a dollar per shot after initial expenses. The higher resolution might not matter on monitors, but it makes a huge difference in size limitations and sharpness when printed, and prints are generally the goal for artists.
True large format like 4x5 costs something like $10 a shot depending what film you use (I've heard it can cost a lot less if you shoot cheapo medical b&w), but has insane resolution, measured in gigapixels. You can print it wall-sized, no problem. On top of that, you can only perform the full range of movements such as tilt shift and correcting for some types of perspective distortion on a large format field camera.
This stuff does not matter for photojournalist or weddings or sports, but many professional artists still choose film. They never really stopped. This is in contrast to DJs, the largest supporters of vinyl through the 90s and 00s, who seem to have mostly stopped spinning vinyl unless they're scratching.
As a hobbyist, I appreciate that film makes me think more about each shot. I hate the immediate feedback of digital. I love film's tactile nature. I love turning off the screen and hitting the darkroom. But for me, I agree it's definitely a lifestyle choice.
You are comparing vinyl to film but in the way you are doing it you are implicitly comparing the experience of the consumer of the audio with the producer of the image.
It is interesting though, that the "analog vs. digital" takes place both in photography and music in both the production and consumption stages. You can record analog or digital and listen to analog or digital sources of the recording. Likewise with photography, you can use a digital or film camera and then you can view the image on a print from a darkroom or on your computer monitor.
It seemed as though you were using the term "hipster" to imply vinyl was more about style and trend. If that is the case, I wouldn't characterize the sonic differences between analog and digital recordings as simply "hipster" differences. There is a quantifiable difference between an analog and digital wave. Not saying one is better than the other but they are different.
Your argument that the differences with film vs. digital seemed to boil down to the economics of the two mediums not any aesthetic difference. That is interesting because off the top of my head I don't think there is any scenario in music recording where it becomes cheaper to go analog. I believe, in general, analog recording is more expensive.
> You are comparing vinyl to film but in the way you are doing it you are implicitly comparing the experience of the consumer of the audio with the producer of the image.
> Your argument that the differences with film vs. digital seemed to boil down to the economics of the two mediums not any aesthetic difference. That is interesting because off the top of my head I don't think there is any scenario in music recording where it becomes cheaper to go analog. I believe, in general, analog recording is more expensive.
You are correct, my apologies. From the producer standpoint, analog recording techniques offer few benefits compared to digital.
I didn't argue from an aesthetic viewpoint because I don't think the aesthetic viewpoint is worth arguing about, in that it's generally a non-productive conversation that ends up in "well I prefer x because it feels better than y". Although, I will argue one particular point: I find that vinyl creates an "equalizing" factor when listening to older music alongside newer music, whereas the increased clarity and lower noise floor of digital makes 50s/60s/earlier recordings sound considerably worse than contemporary recordings. A result of this is that when listening on vinyl, I am better able to look past poor recording quality and make decisions based on artistic quality. This, however, is merely a personal preference.
> It seemed as though you were using the term "hipster" to imply vinyl was more about style and trend. If that is the case, I wouldn't characterize the sonic differences between analog and digital recordings as simply "hipster" differences. There is a quantifiable difference between an analog and digital wave. Not saying one is better than the other but they are different.
I will direct you to this very enlightening page: http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_%28Vinyl%29 -- in my view, the only quantifiable differences in audio between vinyl and digital is that vinyl has a worse noise floor, a generally smaller "usable" frequency spectrum (the highs deteriorate pretty quickly), and includes surface noise, hum, rumble, etc.
I think the revival is hipster. I collect vinyl because it's often the only place to find certain genres of music (such as western swing and classic honky-tonk country), but I am generally hesitant to buy a pressing of a contemporary recording. I will do it, though, because I like having the physical product, but that is a stylistic decision more than one based on necessity/actual audio differences.
There is little I miss about shooting large format. The huge print thing really doesn't work; an enormous high-quality inkjet print from a sufficiently large sensor (60-80MP medium formatback, or a 200MP multi-shot back if the subject is stationary) will usually look better subjectively. (Sensors are flat. So are glass plates. Film seldom is.)
There are two ways in which shooting film can give objectively better results than shooting digitally. The first is that a Zone System practitioner can wring an exacting exposure from deepest shadows to highest highlights in a single shot. That's especially true when using sheet film (with roll film, you're pretty much stuck with one development for the roll unless you're quick with scissors and can do development by inspection). There are no alignment problems, no interpolation, and no de-ghosting to perform, just a hell of a lot of dodging and burning, note-taking and test prints. Combining Zone System shooting on film with good scans and digital manipulation and printing is, in a sense, getting the best of all worlds for enlargements. And if you shoot colour, it's really the only practical way to use the Zone System, since reciprocity failure between channels meant that wild dodging and burning was always a bit of a science experiment with filters, etc.
The second is contact printing. We are a long, long way from being able to produce digital prints that are even in the same ballpark. Yes, they're tiny and jewel-like (unless you're shooting really large formats like 1114 or 16x20), but they repay a close look with an astonishing detail and depth. Not quite as much as a high quality direct positive (a good Daguerreotype is almost unbelievable, even if you forget that it's probably on the order of 150 years old and was made with a lens that is absolute garbage by modern standards), but more than a little impressive nonetheless. A contact print (assuming the picture has artistic merit at all) can still suck me in for an extended stay in a way that no enlargement, dye sub or giclée can. Who knows? We might even have been there* digitally, except that our printers became literally good enough for most purposes a few years back; only a fanatical devotion to ecstatic experiences with small prints by someone in a position to produce a printer is ever going to change that.
I guess I'm a little spoiled by being at a university with a very expensive Hasselblad scanner that can actually pull that DPI without issues. I imagine it's much more challenging to achieve that resolution on a flatbed. However, if you have access to a facility that has a nice scanner, then it's probably much cheaper to simply scan your large format film than to purchase a digital back.
I would love to see some large format contact prints someday. It sounds incredible. An artist in the area was doing tintype portraits and I got to observe. I wish I remembered more of how it looked, but after a 6 second ("manually timed") exposure, the result was beautiful. I've always loved making small enlargement prints of my 35mm negatives, but being able to contact print sounds so valuable.
I agree with your points, but it might be worth noting that the resolutions you're talking about are not so easy to achieve in practice. To get 100MP out of a medium format frame you need to scan it at around 4000dpi, which isn't really achievable unless you send it to a professional lab (which can be quite expensive). Of course, there are cheap flatbeds now which claim to have an optical resolution of 4000dpi or higher, but you never get that resolution out of them in practice.
The major reason for me to occasionally shoot film is that I find the haptic and usability of the cameras way better than current digital models. Depends on how much you're comfortable to spend though.
No wonder. Recently I bought Nikon D750, "camera of the year 2014", and barely see any difference to D7000 (except for high ISO where D750 is stunning), the skin is still as mushy and features flat as always. Then I bought Sigma SD1 Merrill, with a 3-layer Foveon sensor that is probably the closest to a film-equivalent digital camera and the studio portrait photos are simply breathtaking despite camera being a slow clunker with horrible high ISO. I really can't go back to D750 now, all pictures feel flat, details hidden, unnatural noise at ISO 100 etc.
It might be that those that like to stay with film don't like the effect of most digital sensors. If you search on photography forums, plenty of people are displeased by digital look, and if you have a perfect color vision (like I do), it sometimes hurts... There is of course a lot of nostalgia and desire to be different while sticking to film. Technically in most measurable characteristics digital sensors vastly outperform film, yet there are some subtle characteristics we perceive they have hard time to replicate (like microcontrast).
Of course, some digital cameras bring their own "artistic license" to the mix, like Canon is known for pleasant color palette and being very flattering to a model look, and many people then prefer such a look to anything shot on film which looks more realistic.
You get to stand in a darkroom for hours, intensely focused on one thing without any interruptions. There's is a huge amount of highly detailed knowledge needed get even passable results. It's a slow ritualistic process prone to being derailed by even the slightest mistake.
All these things when earned over years give you a deep respect for the medium.
I am, as well, but not because of the tubes themselves, anymore. The reason I haven't given up my tube amps is because the quality of the non-tube amps generally sucks. The reason seems to be that DSP-equipped amps with tube simulation are trying to address two problems instead of just one. One of the problems they are trying to address is the high cost of tube amps. The other is simulating a tube sound without tubes. I believe the first part of the equation is where things are going wrong.
A cheap amp and speaker with a DSP simulated tube sound being run through it will still sound like a cheap amp and speaker. There may be high end manufacturers making high quality guitar amps with emulation, but I'm unaware of them. They haven't been present in the music store on any occasion I've gone in to select a new amp.
The brands I'm aware of doing "tube emulation" in amps are brands I would never buy, at any cost. Behringer, Line 6 (and this is considered one of the good ones, honestly, and they do sound better than most, but are still cheaply constructed), Tech21 (again, decent, but not high end). All pretty shitty amps that happen to have a modeling DSP stuck in front.
I just did some googling, and it seems Roland is out front on making a reasonably high quality modeling combo amp (GA112). I'd be willing to bet that sounds as good as a real tube amp in the same price range, because the old JC120 combo was a great solid state combo amp...Roland knows how to make a high quality solid state amp, and they were on the front line of amp modeling. Of course, it also costs as much as a real mid-range tube amp, at ~$500.
I suspect there's a lot of cargo culting going on, as well. Guitarist knows their favorite recordings were made with tube amps, so they want a tube amp. So, any manufacturer wanting to make amps that are sought after, will make them tube amps, despite the many negatives to tube amps (requirement to bias them, requirement to periodically replace tubes, temperature sensitivity, etc.).
In short: We're probably buying into a superstitious belief that tube amps sound better than a modeling amp of similar quality. The only problem is we can't readily find many modeling amps of similar quality because they're targeted toward a price-conscious market and so they've cut corners everywhere and not just on the lack of tube preamp and amp circuits.
There are also photographers that refuse to abandon even older style cameras, like Hiroshi Sugimoto, which uses 8x10 large-format camera for many of his works.
I still use B&W film. It's just a different art form. People didn't stop painting when photography came along, people didn't throw away their instruments and replace them with synths, people won't stop sculpting and buy 3D printers instead. I don't care that it's not practical - I'm not doing photography for a living.
I'm afraid I disagree. It's not a different art form, it is just an evolution of it. There is literally nothing that film cameras can do that digital camera's can't do, and in most cases do better. Comparing the transition to painting versus photography is just ridiculous - you might as well compare painting to sculpture, because they are genuinely different art forms. 3D printing and sculpting are completely different processes to produce a 3D shape - film and digital photography are two almost identical processes to produce the same end result. I don't see a single argument in favour of film besides nostalgia. A much more accurate comparison would be someone who insists on heating pots over a wood fire every night, rather than using a gas flame.
Do you think this argument is going to convince someone who enjoys shooting with film? I'm sure it won't, and that's interesting. The question comes up all over in art making, and it's never resolved through these kinds of arguments.
I don't think most people who enjoy shooting on film put it forward as better than digital. That's why you don't hear "a single argument in favour." It's not a question of better or worse.
As for your argument, "digital cameras can do everything film cameras do" is first of all wrong, and second of all irrelevant even if true.
Why wrong? Well, consider chemical crossprocessing, or the effects of expired film, or just the different tones of different types of stock. You might either be uninterested in such things, or think that these effects can be easily reproduced with postprocessing, but even in the latter case it's different, different skills are required, different tools, different mindsets.
Why irrelevant? Because at least some of the perceived value of film comes from the limitations themselves. That's something you can never get at through making the digital tools more advanced—in fact, it just gets worse. For someone who shoots on B&W film, the lack of color can be a feature. Even the small capacity of a film roll can be a boon; for example, it might give me a mindset of scarcity and significance.
There's a restaurant in Stockholm that only uses wood fire. I won't knock it until I've tasted it. And the presence of fire is something in itself, aside from culinary blind tests.
>Do you think this argument is going to convince someone who enjoys shooting with film?
No, I don't think it will convince them to shoot digital, which is a lost cause. I was more specifically arguing about the claim that it is a different art form, which I think is nonsense and pretentious
>Because at least some of the perceived value of film comes from the limitations themselves.
I agree with this and everything else you wrote. But my response to this is to see the advantage in scarcity of shots, and the limiting nature of black and white, and apply those restrictions shooting in digital.
Ah, I see. Yeah, I'm not sure what "different art form" is supposed to mean, and I don't really see it that way...
But my response to this is to see the advantage in scarcity of shots, and the limiting nature of black and white, and apply those restrictions shooting in digital.
That has a certain rationality to it, but I don't think it's that simple. You could certainly tell people to just do it, but psychologically, emotionally, cognitively, it's not the same.
I'm not much of a photographer, but I know that with music software that has too many options, I end up confused, stressed, exhausted by possibilities. That's not inherent to the tools, it's just a feature of my limited psyche.
So I appreciate tools that are themselves "restricted." But when I'm actually using such tools—like simple guitar effect pedals, or simple portable recorders—I don't think in terms of restrictions. Because I don't have to think so much about the infinite possibilities of digital stuff at all. I can "get into a zone", kind of like driving a manual car.
When I do photography, I'm attracted to the notion of "contemplative photography," which some people might find weird. But it means among other things that the intimate physical aspects of the equipment are as important as anything. Dealing with a colorful menu display with choices of widescreen, pixel resolutions, presets, etc has a subtle cognitive presence that can be disturbing.
Instruments and tools are "user interfaces" or "user experiences." Sometimes the distinction between analog and digital is fetishized. The distinction between simplicity and complexity seems more important.
If your experience of film photography is sending a roll off and getting an envelope of prints back, then maybe, but if you are developing yourself, the development process involves all sorts of trade-offs of time, temperature, and chemistry, then wet-printing is more of the same, along with literal dodging and burning (do you ever wonder why the Photoshop tools are called that?). It really has very, very little in common with a digital workflow. So your point is one from ignorance.
>It's not a different art form, it is just an evolution of it. (user Unfamiliar, above) //
I think he's kinda right there when he goes on to note that the resulting final image from a digital process can be visually adapted to emulate what can be achieved with film.
But I also think you're right to note that the craft of chemical development is markedly different to digital photo processing (photoshopping or what-have-you) [with or without printing].
It makes me consider typewriters vs. wordprocessors; or a potters hands vs. a jigger [or jolley].
To my mind the road travelled to reach a final artistic presentation can be important even if the evidence of it is not present in the form or image itself.
>Do you think this argument is going to convince someone who enjoys shooting with film?
No, I don't think it will convince them to shoot digital,
Your whole argument is based on a false premise - that people who enjoy shooting film don't like digital. There are lots of us who like doing both. I like shooting 4k digital in film production because it has huge economic advantages. I like shooting still digitally because I can take 200 pictures in an afternoon without switching cards, and go back and check focus and exposure on the stop to know if I've got the shot I wanted or not.
Shooting film isn't about having a limited number of shots or shooting in black and white (although I do prefer black and white, but have no problem doing that from digital sources, plus there are even B&W-only digital cameras that trade away color options for might higher resolution). Instead it forces you to select your shots based on how things look and the much more limited shooting options available, as well as exploring the decidedly nonlinear nature of the film substrate itself. I'm interested in the artifacts that many try to engineer away in pursuit of accuracy, and would much rather use tools where those artifacts are more likely to emerge naturally than start with a perfect image and try to paint them on afterwards.
>I'm interested in the artifacts that many try to engineer away
See, I just don't find that stuff interesting. Lens flare from non-coated lenses, light leaking into badly constructed film cameras, old film which has gone bad, weird colour shifts due to the imperfection of the chemicals used - none of these things contain any profundity for me. My interest is in the subject and the context of the photograph. These "artefacts" that you talk about are no more interesting than tool marks on a sculpture or brush strokes on a painting. It doesn't add any depth to a piece of art just because flaws in the tool are reflected in the final product. Otherwise you could make your sculpture 10 times more meaningful by refusing to use anything but a butterknife to make it.
For someone who shoots on B&W film, the lack of color can be a feature.
Yes, you will definitely notice this if you shoot alot - composition in B&W images is more about geometry and symmetry and texture, and you look at colours differently two, you are always thinking, that's a vivid contrast in colour but they will be the same tone of grey. Shooting colour with the intent to convert later, is as you say a different mindset.
But not film B&W, which has a different colour and contrast response to "let's remove all the saturation" viewfinder B&W.
Personally I'm happy with a 100% digital workflow. In fact these days I take most photos on an iPhone, and leave the SLR at home.
But I also know that film and optical filtering look different..
You can produce an imitation of a film look with digital processing. But it's an imitation. There are subtleties of colour, grain, contrast/brightness response, and differential colour resolution that are very complicated.
And different films respond in different ways. Everyone can see the difference between digital, budget Kodak, and a roll of Fujifilm Velvia.
And if you're shooting medium or large-format, that's a different ballgame again.
Don't believe me? Take some pictures of a fire. The film and digital versions will look completely different.
Is it worth the effort? For snappy snaps, certainly not. Digital kills it for convenience.
But if I worked as high-end commercial landscape, architectural, or art photographer, I'd certainly consider film for at least some projects.
I agree with that. I find that looking at good B&W photos is similar to listening to acoustic instrumental music. Where the characteristics of the music are passed through an instrument without coloration by voice or by other instruments
One of my favorite Fil groups on flickr is https://www.flickr.com/groups/onfilm/pool/ (Film isn't dead, it just smells funny). Some are very serious about their preference, some just like experimenting. Reading their discussions can be at times, enlightening.
Just to reinforce on the point of people wanting to continue with what they know and love, we still have people who mostly work on large format film or medium format film. Granted, the perception granted by the lenses for these formats, give you a completely different feeling from that of 35mm and smaller.
One thing film was better at than digital, at least a couple of years ago was dynamic range. You can have the bright sun in your filed of view and the surrounding area are not "blown out" (all highlights)
> There is literally nothing that film cameras can do that digital camera's can't do, and in most cases do better.
Like the other posters, I disagree that this is relevant. However, there are no practically affordable large format digital cameras, and the depth of field effects and resolution that you can get from a 4x5 or 8x10 view camera still can't be obtained digitally. (At 2000dpi, 4x5 is 96MP and 8x10 is 320MP. You can get that resolution from a decent consumer flatbed.)
The resolution of digital cameras is limited by optical diffusion, not megapixel count, and since this applies just as much to film cameras your 2000dpi is irrelevant.
DPI of final print, not the sensor. Large format cameras could even have larger DPI than an SLR and still get vastly better pictures. Large format CCDs exist, but are very expensive, and of course have different performance characteristics than film.
It'a limited by diffusion at this point for full frame sensors, but it would be possible to get more resolution from a larger sensor, which of corse is exactly what you get from large format film.
Depth of field, though, is limited by the sensor's dimensions, which is drastically different between film and digital. A 35mm film equivalent digital camera is already a pretty expensive "full-frame", a mid-format digital cameras are available at the price of a mid-luxury car and large format digital is not available for a consumer at all.
depth of field has nothing to do with sensor size, it's only related to focal length. the advantage of large/medium format is that longer focal lengths have a wider field of view than 35mm.
Well, I won't get into semantics fight and will concede this to you. Yet, you are still looking at the fact that you can take pictures with a film/glass camera that are either very expensive or impossible to take with a digital one. Specifically, you won't be able to get the same depth of field with the same composition of the frame for the reasons we both seem to understand.
For people buying their cameras and shooting landscapes and waterfalls on their vacations, sure. That's the only photography I do, and I do it fairly well. But nobody is going to pay for that, because everyone has that friend they can just get the pictures they want from.
But fine-art photography necessarily must set itself apart from the masses. It's about selling a story to fine-art customers. And you can't sell the story of "I bought this camera at Best Buy and I sat in my livingroom pushing pixels in Photoshop on my laptop to make this image."
I know people who are grinding their own lenses. I know people who are making cameras out of box trucks. They are making film negatives the size of posters. You're not going to find a CMOS sensor anywhere near that size, for any price.
That said, I know people who are deliberately glitching their digital cameras to make different types of images. You can't do that with film.
And that's the point. Yes, if your notion of "fine-art photography" is the dime-a-dozen wedding photographer stuff you see in the background of every Medium blog, no, there is no difference between film and digital. But anyone can do that, thus nobody is making money off of photography like that.
I wrote this to address exactly this intuition about film.
But tl;dr, the experience of shooting film and digital have huge differences and the photos you get at the end are influenced by the process of taking them. They are not just pixels that exist in a vacuum.
I shoot both film and digital and I don't think they're at all the same. When I'm shooting film I pick lighting and development techniques that will maximize the chemical nature of the film, bringing out grain and so on. Certainly you can emulate those things digitally, but generally when I shoot digital I aim to preserve as much information as possible, when I shoot with film it's more about pushing against the physical limits of the medium. Pushing against the physical limits of digital looks like ass; when digital fails it fails ugly, because you fall off a cliff rather than rolling down a hill.
> There is literally nothing that film cameras can do that digital camera's can't do, and in most cases do better.
If one likes the look of Tri-X, one could shoot digitally and do a lot of post-processing to replicate the look. Or, one could just keep shooting with Tri-X.
There is literally nothing that film cameras can do that digital camera's can't do
Yes there is. Film cameras can force you to take into account the additional limitations you have when you go about taking your photographs. If you're practising an art form, that is part of your art.
film and digital photography are two almost identical processes to produce the same end result.
End result? Sure, that's one part of the art. One part. It's an important part, but if you're talking about art, it's by no means all there is.
"It's not a different art form, it is just an evolution of it."
I would agree that it's not a different art form. However I would strongly disagree that digital photography represents any kind of evolution. Digital photography is simply a new tool, nothing more, nothing less. It has its own aesthetic, process, and result.
The vast majority of people take terrible pictures and are undoubtedly better off with digital. It's quicker, it's cheaper, and it's easier. But when talking about a skilled photographer and printer, the differences between digital and analog become more apparent. Digital looks like digital, and analog looks different.
For your average snapshot, digital probably yields better average results. But in my opinion, I've not seen a gallery quality digital print that I thought matched the quality of the best analog prints. Digital looks strange to me, especially at larger sizes. (I think it might have something to do with the way edges get rendered.) That's just my subjective taste, others might prefer digital. I certainly don't hate digital, I just don't like it as much.
Regardless, I think the important point is that photography is an aesthetic art form, and therefore you are going to have people that prefer one or the other aesthetic. It's not a question of good or bad, they're just different. To say that "There is literally nothing that film cameras can do that digital camera's can't do, and in most cases do better" I think misses the ultimate point. The thing that digital hasn't been able to do, is look like analog.
P.S. Regarding your specious analogy of wood fire versus gas flame, if you can't tell the delicious, smokey difference between grilling over a wood fire versus a gas grill then I would suggest that your obsession with ease of use is just as ridiculous as someone obsessed with nostalgia.
The only thing "better" about a digital camera is ease of use/convenience - it is perfect for the "I want it now" generation. There is no digital equivalent to medium or large format film cameras.
Your final analogy might be better if it was stated as the difference between bbq over real coals/wood vs a gas grill with propane tank. Yeah they both cook the food. The gas grill is move convenient. But it ain't better.
A much fairer comparison would be watercolour vs oil painting. It's the same art, but different mediums, involving different skills, different techniques and achieving different ends.
Fwiw, there are certainly things that are extremely difficult to replicate digitally. Solarisation is one of them. (Don't get hung up on the camera bit. There is more to the darkroom than just a primitive analogue Photoshop.)
I use a charcoal grill, would never stoop to a gas grill. Its an art form. If the cameras were being used as reality-documentation devices, then sure use a digital one. But as an art, its like using camel-hair brushes instead of plastic, or doing pottery in a shed in northern Wisconsin instead of a flat in NY. It changes the person; it changes the art.
I suppose it's a lot like the silliness about preferring vinyl records to CDs. Sometimes there's nostalgia about the snap crackle pop of vinyl, and I like the smell of the turntable, but there's no way that the sound of vinyl is better. And I own a thousand or two vinyl records.
The problem with this is that all the cracks and pops happen at exactly the same moment whenever you replay the record; to a large extent, this is not so with vinyl, I suppose.
The rumble is different, as it comes from the turntable, but the cracks and pops happen at exactly the same time. You can see the defects in the vinyl that causes them - the vinyl surface is hardly pristine.
Oil painting is 15th century photography. Film isn't going anywhere, and frankly neither is cooking with a wood fire. There's a national holiday practically dedicated to cooking on a wood fire (Fourth of July).
Even if you were doing it for a living, "practicality" isn't really a consideration, either.
The wedding photographers shoot digital, because the market doesn't really want fine-art photos. They want whatever the current fashion is, and that's usually lots and lots of photos on a thumbdrive these days.
The fine art photographers are not only not shooting digital, they're shooting you-can't-even-buy-it analog. The only fine-art photographers I know who are actually making money selling their photography have all built their own cameras and are doing extremely niche stuff. They built the camera, they make the film, they do their own developing. The only thing they didn't make was the glass of the lens, practically.
Actually, scratch that, I just got tapped by one of them asking me if I knew anything about making lenses from scratch, so clearly the market is going there (I'm a sort of consulting scientist for people who know me).
And that's basically the art world in general. There are only two ways to make money from art: either mass-produce something that everyone can and will want to own, or make something so complex, so intricate, so massive that you can make your living for the year off of one sale. One is a monumental effort of production and marketing, the other is a monumental effort of production and marketing.
When anyone can be an artist, you have to go to extremes to set yourself apart.
I had a similar response, charcoal is still used to draw with and that is what, 100,000 years old by now?
The interesting challenge will be that there is a certain level of industry required to support the manufacture of base film stock, and making the chemicals to develop it. As the number of users goes down, the base cost of that development is spread across fewer users (higher per user cost) and at some point nobody is will willing to pay the full cost of supporting the industry. It is, by definition, the equivalent of the power curve in flight, higher prices lead to fewer users, which leads to higher prices, until you are down to 1 user paying for all the costs. Sometimes you can recover if new manufactures can come in at a lower level but without that you lose the ability to support many ways in which film was used.
Yes, the industry has been decimated. But what has also happened is that new, much smaller companies have sprung up to take the place of the old companies, buying out their manufacturing assets at pennies on the dollar.
Regardless, probably one of the coolest aspects of analog photography is the fact that you can make all your own materials (e.g. pinhole camera, albumen print, etc.) There are also photography companies that cater to the DIY/maker crowd. Photographers Formulary is a great place to get pretty much everything you need for film developing and printing. http://stores.photoformulary.com/
For the hardcore photography geeks, two good reference books.
This is what happened with ADOX, they went from being a large manufacturer to scaling down to a small team of experts. They still develop mind you, like ADOX CMS 20 has a resolvable resolution of about 500 Megapixels... http://www.adox.de/Photo/adox-films-2/cms-20-ii-adotech-ii/
The challenge is generally in making enough of the pre-cursors in enough quantity to make it cost effective.
So early technology, like charcoal :-), easy to make the pre-cursors. And for some silver halide films that is still true (19th century tech). But as you get to things that got their start in the 20th century and required a bunch of composite things to be in place in order to exist, those things may end up outside of the range of manufacturability (at a market making price).
It will be interesting to see the things that fall out from that.
Completely agree. I shoot B&W film as well, and I enjoy the whole process: from the manipulation of my old Voigtländer, to the smell of the chemicals, the image appearing on the paper, and the prints I end up with. Which is not to say I don't like taking pictures with my phone, or a good digital camera. It's just another kind of pursuit. I also find that the end result of taking photos with film tends to be a physical object, the print, while my digital photos tend to end up as images in my computer.
People are still splicing movie film with razors and glue too. I wouldn't say it's a "different art form" any more than acrylic is a different art form than oil or tempura (paints in case you're wondering) -- indeed film photography + darkroom technique is closer to digital photography + Photoshop technique than oil is to acrylic. There are different tradeoffs, and for 99.9% (or more) of uses the tradeoffs favor digital.
The bottom really fell out of the (colour) film market in the 90s when the newspapers switched over to digital cameras like the Nikon D1, 2.7MP was for all intents and purposes "good enough" to replace film in that industry and the speed advantages were overwhelming. Since then (B&W) film has been about artists and hobbyists, so the industry has been limping along longer than you think.
It is more of an issue of scale - kodak was set up for huge volumes on huge lines, while Ilford was set up for smaller runs and is doing ok. Black and white film is over 100 years old, and is fairly well understood tech, you can make your own if you really want (glass plates are relatively easy), although colour is much harder.
I'm surprised there are no digital large format cameras or backs. I'm also surprised the medium format backs are so expensive. Isn't making larger photo sensors supposed to be easier?
Btw, if you had never seen photos made on a large format camera, find a gallery near you, and go see some prints. I'm yet to see a digital equivalent of that.
> No, they are chips, and making large defect free chips is hard. Chips are best small.
That's true. But you can sometimes assembly lots of small chips into one larger sensor and solve a lot of the issues doing that causes in software after the fact.
I suspect it doesn't exist because the market is tiny and the R&D too expensive, rather than it being an inherent problem with the tech' itself.
I just don't think enough people, even pros, would spend $20K+ on one of these to justify the engineering, software, and marketing that went into it (and the level or risk).
> You can get large format scanner backs, but they take time to scan.
So recreating the original experience of large format then? :)
The company I work for designs and sells image sensors. Our largest (custom) sensor is about the size of a phablet phone - not quite large format but it's close.
Interestingly the title "Digital Refuseniks" actually appears as the title for the article if you check out the "Features and Analysis" list on the right hand side of the article's page.
