Why Film?

Anthony will be guest blogging for me for a few days. Enjoy the eccentric meanderings of Lisa V Lupo Photography’s most valued employee.

Digital is the future; film is the past. The future is nauseating.

Film is the love affair of those that conceive of photography in a certain way. You know who you are. You value the authenticity of a negative. You like the metal bodies and bulletproof build quality of older cameras. You want it to matter when you press the shutter. You love the soft color and creamy highlights of film. To be honest, the film love affair is not for everyone.  You are either drawn to film for the gestalt of it; or you aren’t. It’s a matter of preference. But there are practical reasons why you may want to shoot film. I’ve read others’ arguments, and frankly, I think there is some misinformation out there. So let me set the record straight, as I see it, at least.

Dynamic range is a mathematical concept that many take very seriously. Strictly speaking, dynamic range is the difference between the darkest areas and lightest areas for which a given medium can record detail. If a digital camera has 3 stops of dynamic range, this means that the sensor can record only three stops of difference between the lightest and darkest areas of the image that aren’t clipped (pure black or pure white). You’ve seen clipped highlights before—that nasty, harsh, bright white area of an image (usually the sky). More dynamic range means that you can record more information in an image.

Some people will tell you that film has more dynamic range than digital. It depends on the film and digital sensor, of course. While there is a way to measure dynamic range, RAW file manipulation and the film scanning process have muddied the comparison. The simple rule of thumb is: film handles highlights better than digital sensors, and digital sensors handle shadows better than film. In my limited experience, this is mostly true.

If you shoot digital well, then you know to avoid overexposure at all costs (except for artistic effects, or clever backlighting).* Provided you shoot digital with this in mind (and are careful to check your images for minor highlight clipping), then there is no reason to get all hot-and-bothered by dynamic range arguments. RAW editing opens the door for digital shooters to save all kinds of detail (especially for underexposures). The only important difference between film and digital, with respect to dynamic range, is that film requires less digital manipulation to get acceptable results.

Medium format film and high-end digital cameras capture enough detail for just about any purpose. Medium format film cameras capture more information, strictly speaking, than 35mm-sized digital sensors. But unless you like pixel-peeping, there’s no real reason to get excited about it. Lisa’s D800 is glorious overkill. Medium format film is similarly glorious overkill. Don’t worry about resolution. (I can’t say the same for 35mm film, which I think is demonstrably inferior to high-end digital cameras.)

Others swear by the look of film. Film is softer and creamier, in general, than digital. Digital is sharper and snappier. The advantage to digital is that you can edit it anyway you like. The advantage to film is that you shouldn’t (at least not significantly). With film, you get a color palette that’s been refined over several generations. With digital, you are at the mercy of your own Photoshop skills. I don’t think digital ever looks good straight-out-of-camera. At this point, you need to decide just how much time you want to spend post-processing: to each his or her own.

Medium format bokeh is different than digital bokeh. Use Flickr to see which you prefer. Medium format film seems to ‘swirl’ the out-of-focus areas. I love it.

I hope to have covered most of the technical differences by this point. You will decide to shoot film for at least one of three reasons: (1) deep-seeded psychological attraction to film, (2) streamlined workflow, or (3) the film-shooter’s state of mind. Let me expand on (3).

Film shooters will always privilege composition and exposure during a shoot. They have to. Film is simply too expensive to waste. In this way, film is always about the fundamentals. If I’m not thinking about the fundamentals, I can’t take decent pictures. I can’t think about the fundamentals with a modern DSLR. Even though I know what every setting does on Lisa’s D800, I can’t help but feel spoiled for choice.

The modern DSLR is a grey box. It is designed to work like a film camera—to generate output consistent with a film camera at the same settings—but the behind-the-scenes technology is very different. When I view an image I’ve taken on the LCD, even if I am shooting RAW, I see an image presented under a certain color palette as determined by a white-balance algorithm that I do not understand.** The ISO is not the actual ISO of the sensor (see DxO Mark), but the ISO of the sensor that the camera manufacturer tweaks for the purposes of winning the technology war. It is not me, a subject, and an exposure. It is me, an amazing piece of technology, an exposure, and a subject. With digital, I spend more time absorbed in the technology than ‘in the moment’, so to speak.

On the other hand, I know the look of Ektar 100; I conceive of my compositions with full knowledge of how the image will look on film. I do not think of the many ways I can make the image look after hours of tweaking. I am in a state of mind that builds color into the photographic process before I take the picture.

You might wonder why a disciplined digital shooter can’t do the same thing. They can. Freedom is what you make of it. I shoot film because too much freedom is a bad thing for my creative process. I need restrictions on my creative process to feel truly creative at all.

Ladies and gentlemen, film is for the photographer than enjoys the film experience, or the photographer that can’t handle digital. I confess that I am both.

* I don’t think anyone still uses ETTR methodology. It made sense when digital sensors were more prone to noise. Nowadays, you simply flirt with highlight clipping—or disaster—more than necessary.

** Yes, you could carry a grey card with you.

Epilogue

There is one final reason to shoot medium format film: big, bright, viewfinder options. Waist-level finders are simply the greatest compositional tool available to photographers, specifically, medium format film photographers. Most photographers, myself included, suffer from the eye-level composition disease. This means that we will continually neglect to view a subject from any vantage other than standing eye-level. As beings that prefer the path of least resistance, we can’t help it. Big, bright, waist-level finders work like a charm. A waist-level finder is like a little projection screen (see the picture below) that is viewed from above. I find that equipping my waist-level finder opens a world of photographic possibilities that I would have otherwise failed to notice. The world looks different from the waist, and I can adjust the camera’s height without craning my back or crawling on the ground.

Even if you don’t use a waist-level finder, medium format prism finders are big and bright. I find that this makes composition much easier, especially on the eyes. I have 20-15 vision, so it isn’t an issue of eyesight. You simply have more area with which to evaluate a given perspective.

Sure, you can use an LCD on a digital camera. Good luck seeing anything in daylight! Waist-level finders are shaded (and most have built-in retractable loupes for checking focus). Problem solved.