With wedding photography, I don't think it's what anyone
needs, it's what they'll pay for.
I am pretty sure the photographer at one of my sisters' weddings shot hundreds of frames.I was a kid but remember watching him as he had an autowinder on one which was cool to a nerdy child in 1980. He had at least 50-70 shots just of the kiss and throwing the bouquet. She didn't buy 500 individual prints, though. Her wedding album was the standard dozen crappy portraits of the wedding party, some nice ones of bride and groom, and a couple just of her in the dress, then several great shots of the bouquet and the toss, and maybe a dozen or score candids around the church and reception.
1000 frames didn't equal 1000 pictures sold. He got paid for his time and the portraits up front, he got extra for extra prints made, so those hundreds of frames were to sell a couple dozen really excellent shots that he wouldn't have sold if he'd only shot one or two frames each of the goings on.
Digital is worse, but also people used to have a dozen portraits of themselves over their lifetime. Millennials take a dozen "portraits" with their phones every damned week, so the perceived value of individual photos is less. And they're going to want to share on the onlines, so lots of digital copies for the face books and the insta grams are needed, even if they never get a decent print. They don't need them, but that's what they'll pay for, so that's what a wedding shooter does.
As a side note, had the Z7 out a couple weeks ago for a band I've done a little work for. Bad light, nothing worth getting, but they wanted candids. I gave them 8 or 9 images. I'm sure I deleted 250 or more. The light was genuinely low and crappy, but I was able to pull enough out by firing a burst and maybe one out of five the singer would not be moving to much for the exposure. So spray and pray, and I got paid. Art for commerce is sometimes way more commerce than art.
The point of 220 with weddings was simply to always be ready for that decisive moment. It made sense, and pre digital wedding people burned many rolls of film so minimal downtime loading or swapping backs mattered to them. World was a little different then regarding the value of photography, but if a wedding guy could do a 36 roll of medium format at 7 fps like the press guys shooting 35mm, some of them would have done it.
Of course there is.
I don't photograph professionally except on very rare occasion, but the last guy who asked me specifically wanted film. Whatever, he paid for it, but it has cachet for him.
I have recorded to tape. I learned on tape and some parts of the process I like better. I don't use it now and would not even if I was in a studio setting because maintaining a multitrack is way more intensive than people realize, but there are tangible differences. If it weren't too inconvenient to maintain I'd be fine working with an 8 track or 16 track tape deck.
The biggest difference is in
how you record and when you make your decisions in the recording process. Not unlike film, where you might decide it will be b&w, you choose the film speed and then the film you want, maybe you use a red filter to pop clouds, or maybe you develop differently to get greater contrast, etc. All of that comes before you print or scan, and is unchangeable in the negative that results. With RAW you can change everything the camera could have changed so you put all the decisions off to the end. I'm liking deciding and committing as part of the process these days. It stops me from endlessly tweaking things that nobody else will notice and keeps me making more, new art.
Older analog processes might be slower, but as art for art's sake it's fine to use them. Even if the end product is subtly different, if the client wants that (or you, if you're just doing it for yourself) then sure, deal with the process. Like, if I had a choice maybe I'd record a small band on tape for "artistic" reasons, but no way in hell I'd bother with that for a radio commercial. You want product photography for your website? I'm definitely going digital.
But I write for me (and to friends and family), I take art photographs for me and only half a dozen people ever see them, and I only record myself and a few close friends, so we can work however the heck we want. I do it for the enjoyment of the process as much as anything else.
I also write with a fountain pen, so I'm really one of those "always someone" guys. I was even making my own from scratch at one point:
