On the surface, the immediate difference between shooting film and shooting digital is that with digital you get instantaneous feedback on the image you have captured by looking at the review screen on the back of the camera. With film you really do not know what you have until the developed film comes out of the development tank, dries and you scan it. Although, once you truly understand the exposure triangle and are comfortable with it you actually do know what you have captured.
Beyond the ability to review or not review the basic difference between shooting film vs digital is how images are exposed.
With digital it is important to expose for the highlights because if the highlights are blown out there is no detail in those areas to work with, if you have the Highlights feature of your camera turned on you will see blinking in the over exposed areas, further, if you understand the histogram, an image that has over exposed highlights will have a histogram that has a high peak on the left hand side.
Since film has a greater dynamic range, the latitude between highlights and shadows while retain detail in both, than digital and because film needs more light than digital the phrase, “expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights” is often espoused, that is really more applicable to sheet film than it is to roll film because you can exposure and develop each sheet differently. With roll film you drop the film in the development tank and the entire roll receives the same developing process. My advice when shooting film is to err on the side of over exposure because film needs light and it very easily retains highlight details when over exposed. Under exposure in film causes muddied and unflattering shadow detail.
The other important difference between shooting film vs digital is that with film you are essentially stuck with the ISO you have selected for the film that is in the camera, you either shoot at the box speed ISO of the film, or you push the film (rate and expose the film at an ISO speed faster than the box ISO, for example, you rate an ISO 400 speed film at ISO 800, thus under-exposing the film) or you pull the film (rate and expose the film at an ISO speed slower than the box ISO, for example, you rate an ISO 400 speed film at ISO 200, thus over-exposing the film). When you push or pull the film you compensate for the difference in your development time. Will digital you can shoot every single frame at a different ISO because each frame is a completely separate digital file.
As a side note, there is a film development process that will allow the photographer to develop roll film where the ISO rating has been varied within the roll……..Stand Development. I will write about my experiences with Stand Development in another blog post.
Beyond these differences between shooting film vs digital it is still photography and the rules of exposure and composition remain across the formats. I encourage everyone to pick up a camera and record the World around it as seem only through your eyes.
More reasons why I still love to shoot film
If one takes a look at my camera gear one would realise that I am not one who is interested in keeping up with the latest photography equipment. For digital, while I have a Nikon D500, it’s always good to have a crop sensor body for the “add reach” when you need it, the vast majority of my digital work is done on one of, or both of my Nikon D3s camera bodies.
I am also not really inclined to buy new because there are so many great deals on the used market to be had. For my sports work I have a Nikon 200-400mm f4 and a 300mm f2.8, neither is the current model and both were purchased used and both were/are in excellent condition.
I say all of that to say that you don’t need to have the most current equipment to capture great shots, I would say I do pretty well in capturing images……..that brings me back to the topic of this post……Shooting Film.
Please take all of this simply as my personal view and my personal approach to photography, I would never make the comment, without the caveat, “for me”, that Film is better than Digital. I think they both have their pros and cons. Digital will provide you with very “clean” and “perfect” images where Film will always give you those “perfectly imperfect” images.
So, why do I still love to shoot film?
1) Film provides a tangible negative, that is, I can touch and feel it, where digital files are intangible and are stored on a computer of hard drive.
2) Film give the element of anticipation, I still get those feelings of excitement when I pull a roll of film out of the development tank to see what I captured, digital gives you this feedback immediately.
3) I take way fewer shoots on film than I do on digital.
4) Film gives a grainy imperfect image, digital images, outside of noise from using very high ISO, are almost hi-definition.
5) I love the act, or art of processing using those chemicals that emit that familiar and nostalgic smell.
So lets take each point and expand it a little:
1) I am sure we have all been there, I know I have, where we have captured images on a digital camera and neglected to back them up on a second (or third) hard drive and the drive we saved them on crashes and the images are lost forever, unless we wish to pay the high cost of going through data recovery. With film there is the hard copy of the negative that can be physically stored and pulled out 20, 30, or 50+ years later and still be used to make a print. I go through some of my photo albums that have images I captured on my Canon AE-1 back in university in the mid-1980s and the memories come flooding back. To look at the images I have captured on digital I have to open my laptop, attach the appropriate hard drive, find the file with the image I am looking for and then open said. This is because the vast majority of digital images are never printed, they are captured and then they take up space on a hard drive, or if you back up the files, they take up space on multiple hard drives.
Granted, in the film environment today we capture the image, develop the film and scan the images to a hard drive…….however, there is the tangible film, or negative.
2) Yes, with digital we get the instant feedback of what the image looks like on the back of the camera, FOR ME, I love film because there is not that instant feedback, I simply know that I captured the image as I saw it in my mind’s eye but I have to wait for the confirmation. To me that is one of the great things about shooting film, you have to completely trust your ability as a photographer to read the scene and to determine how you get the exposure you want in the scene. For example, I use the Zone System when shooting film so I first determine where I want my shadows to fall on the Zone, typically, I place my shadows in Zone 3 or 4, this gives me the deep shadows and I can retain a little more detail in the highlights.
3) Since I use the Zone System my image making tends to be longer when shooting film then when shooting digital. This and the fact that when shooting medium format film I only get 10 exposures per roll, I become much more meticulous in my shooting. I will typically only capture one frame of the scene unless I change perspective. With digital I find I am always looking for that absolute perfect image, both from an exposure and a compositional perspective so I will shoot multiple frames of the same image and select the best one after uploading the files. What I often find is that because I have multiple images of the same scene selection becomes an issue. With film because I have been so meticulous I tend to capture the images I want in one frame……..no selections to go through.
4) What I absolutely love about film is the lack of perfection in the image, the image will never appear to be as sharply focused as a digital image because the grain in film will not allow for the same level of sharpness. There is just something “raw” about an image captured on film that digital simply cannot give you. Sure there are editing presets that will allow you to process digital images to resemble film……..for me that defeats the purpose, why not just shoot film if you want the film look?
5) For me there is a feeling of the creation of art when shooting and developing film. After capture there is the process of removing the undeveloped film from the film cartridge or roll to the development spool and into the light-proof development tank. There is the mixing of the chemicals to match how you want to develop, there is the art of agitating during the development process, there are many different ways to agitate during the development process and each person uses the one way that gives them comfort. There is a theory that the faster you agitate the more grainy the images will be….I am not certain this theory has proven to be correct. The stop bath, very simply, stops the effects of the developer, that is, it stops the development process, from there we have the fixing process which make the development of the film permanent, in other words, after the fixing process is complete you can safely expose that roll of film, now a negative, to light without destroying it. The final stage is is the wash to removal all chemical residue from the roll of film/negative and then hang it up to dry.
So, in a nutshell, what I truly love about shooting and developing film is the hands on process from start to finish…….it is the creation or making of an image rather than “taking” an image.
Film is not for everyone but I think every photographer should at least give it a try even if it is just to see first hand how far the method of capturing and image has come.
I trust you have enjoyed this blog post, feel free to leave a comment.
Below are some images, similar in nature, show the difference in look between film and digital:
Captured on a Pentax 6x7 with Kodak TriX400 120Film
Captured on a Nikon D3s digital camera