“There’s just something about the look of film that you don’t get in digital; the highlights roll off smoothly rather than blowing into hard white, grain is chaotically imperfect rather than algorithmically patterned.”
“There’s just something about the look of film that you don’t get in digital; the highlights roll off smoothly rather than blowing into hard white, grain is chaotically imperfect rather than algorithmically patterned.”
It’s pretty obvious that digital photography has landed heavy blows on film and left it for dead, but it appears that film still has some fight left in it. At CES 2017, for example, Kodak Aliris announced that it was relaunching Ektachrome, a color reversal film that was discontinued in 2012.While film sales are a mere fraction of what they once were, Kodak, Fujifilm and Harman Technology (which makes the Ilford Photo films) told Time magazine that film sales have actually been growing, albeit slowly, in the last two to three years.
What’s more surprising is that Fujifilm’s instant photography cameras have outsold their digital cameras in recent years. In 2015, Fujifilm estimated it sold 5 million Instax cameras, more than the 1.4 million digital cameras it sold in the same period. The company is estimating that film sales actually went up in 2016, with more than 6.5 million Instax cameras sold.
For some photographers, film never went away. When National Geographic asked photographers to pick their favorite cameras, three out of ten picked a film camera. They cite common reasons; shooting film forces them to slow down, to spend more time observing the scene and connecting with their subjects.
For other photographers who started in digital, it’s the joy of discovering a whole new medium of photography. There’s just something about the look of film that you don’t get in digital; the highlights roll off smoothly rather than blowing into hard white, grain is chaotically imperfect rather than algorithmically patterned, and the colors are more reminiscent of paintings than digital footage.
Film, of course, has its limits. It’s more expensive than digital per shot, you can shoot far less on a single roll than on an SD card, you can’t preview your images to see if you’ve nailed your exposure or are blowing it, and it takes far more time to develop than plugging in your camera to a laptop.
For all the nostalgia about going back to film, it isn’t going to make a critical dent in film’s trending decline. Ektrachrome may be coming back, but Kodak’s popular Kodachrome isn’t. Fujifilm seems to be killing off more classic films every year. And the infrastructure required for a healthy film industry; developers, expert labs, etc., has gone away and isn’t going to return.
So, film isn’t dead, but it’s not the robust force it once was. And yet, for all its imperfections — some say, because of its imperfections — there’s just something about film that you can’t get with digital. Whether for nostalgia, aesthetics or as a niche business, film is still hanging on in there with its ardent practitioners.
Get started with film
NIKON FM2
First released in 1982, the FM2 is a professional film camera with a reputation for being a tough workhorse. It’s fully manual, so be prepared to go hands-on. The FM2n or the FM2T are slight variations of the camera.
LEICA M7
If you have the coin for them, Leica still makes brand new film cameras. The M7 is a 35mm film rangefinder, which means that you compose via a separate viewfinder, not through the lens like an SLR.
MAMIYA RZ67 PRO II
Digital medium format cameras still cost an arm and a leg, but film medium format is far more affordable. One way to start is with the Mamiya RZ67 Pro II, it’s heavier than a twin-lens reflex, but lets you swap lenses.
LOMOGRAPHY LC-A+
Lomography cameras are a fun and relatively inexpensive way to start taking funky, experimental film shots. The classic LC-A+ has a solid metal body and comes with the original Minitar-1 glass lens.
Text: Alvin Soon / Picture: Lomo
