I’ve been shooting digitally for a few months now, and in spite of the tone of the following, a digital SLR was probably one of the best investments I’ve ever made. I made the purchase during a time when I didn’t have access to a means to develop film at a reasonable price, and that inconvenience, I felt, hindered my growth at a period of time when growth was crucial. I never mind having to wait a day or two to get around to processing a few rolls, but at that time, it was agonizing to have hundreds of latent images in rolls I exposed three months ago. And “hundreds” is no exaggeration. I went through periods when I could go through three 36-exposure rolls on a productive day. This was a period when I had just started getting my chops back, after a long hiatus. I needed the quick feedback, and I had no way of measuring my progress. A digital SLR was a godsend for me at the time.
About ten months later, my film developing situation has changed, and my poor 40D is sitting between my Olympus OM-1 and my EOS 3 on my “cameras I use…occasionally” shelf. In place of it, my two Canonets and my (borrowed) Hasselblad have become the cameras I bring with me when I go shooting. I’ve voluntarily (or, perhaps, the opposite?) chosen a fast-aging process over something much more convenient (and, in the long run, cheaper). I suppose I’m rediscovering why I was so hesitant to switch over to digital in the first place.
Some folks claim they like film for the “romance” involved in the process and the overall appearance of the resulting images. I suppose such a manual, involved process is a “romantic” experience. From the lovely chemical perfume that permeats from a freshly-opened canister, to getting fix and its undeniable scent on one’s fingers, to turning the lights on to reveal a print, film creates a level of intimacy which simply cannot be achieved by dragging sliders and moving curves. There is nothing like dedicating an entire day to the process, going through fifteen music albums and an entire tank of gas scouting out spots to shoot. Like I’ve said, I have no qualm with waiting a while to get results.
The look of a film photograph is also something to consider. Obviously, the composition of the material gives it a much more “artistic” texture, and the fact that this can be adjusted through so many different inexpensive mechanisms–push-processing, different films, different developers, different dilutions of developers, etc.–is really appealing. This is complimentary to the fact that a digital sensor simply doesn’t react to light the same way a piece of film does. Digital cameras simply have not achieved the flexibility that film has had access to for decades. They’re coming close, though, and this is part of the reason why I can’t say that the overall “look” of film makes me “prefer” it to digital. I’m sure that, with practice and the right camera, one can get a digital image to look like any kind of film. (I’d probably get a lot of angry responses if I told this to the wrong group of people.)
The true reason I’ve preferred film over digital in recent days is the fact that I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands. One might call my appeal as “romantic,” but I’d say it’s just a fixation on a joy I’ve had since birth. From my primitive pre-preschool drawings and writings, to piano lessons more than ten years (holy shit!) ago, to extremely enthusiastic and thorough chem labs, I’ve always gotten great satisfaction out of creating something, tangible or otherwise, with my hands. I hand-made two pieces of furniture in my house. I’ve never paid for an oil change. I take broken stuff apart just to see what its guts look like. My film obsession is simply another part of the fixation. My images are a product of my hands as much as they are of my eyes. Film photography is a multisensory experience for me.
