Strongly agree here, but probably for different reasons. The photographic community in general spends way too much energy on technological merits of available mediums, and not talking enough about what makes the hobby actually enjoyable. In my opinion, film photographers should stay away from promoting "technological superiority" of film and focus on the real reasons they use it. We all know what they are, and resolution is not on the list.
I want to set up a darkroom badly, but not because I want superior output, but because I expect to have a lot of fun spending time there. No need to shy away from "fun". It's the best gender and age agnostic marketing.
Poppycock! We should do exactly that. Tell people when they pass-on wrong factoids and notions, and then go on to spread well researched and founded knowledge and facts.
Not in an overbearing, stiff, Asperger like fashion. But by having a semi prepared list of things to say. Being succinct, positive and friendly about it.
Most people when they imagine getting lectured from a "fanatic" film guy, they probably think vaguely of the same guy I think.
We all met him in photoshops, at flea markets, photo meets etc: An oldish (which is relative, I meet these types in his early twenties too) born into naive religious
positivism, often ex pro. Like a press man, a pro studio hog, or a dyed in the wool hobbyist... They usually wear "sensible" shoes, beige windbreaker and something red to "spruce it up".
They have very ossified opinions on what is right and just, and what their worth in the equation is. And they are often quite passive aggressive about it.
What's damning is that while their photography is superficially technically proficient WRT the very basics, it is as dull as dishwater.
One kitschy visual platitude after another. With little sense of composition or even the slightest idea about catching the interest of the viewer.
We should aim to be the antithesis to that.
Whenever I hear someone proclaiming "135 film can at the very most resolve the equivalent of 24 MP, most often a lot less", I know exactly what google hits, from the first two or three pages they read, and probably also when they last looked it up.
Epson put some magic sauce in their scanners, that convinces people who look at the results that "this probably can't get much better".
Would be a wonderful general ingredient to source,
Trouble with virtue signalling and humble bragging statements like "it's all about the process", "it's a Craft", "It's something tangible in a digital world", "it allows me to use wonderful old cameras" or "It's keeping a tradition alive", is that all of these schmaltzy platitudes are very nice, probably with more than a grain of truth in them. But, they are ultimately lies and at best secondary "reasons" for the already initiated.
The process and the craft and the tangibility, comes to mean very little over time, and if the same result could be obtained from manipulating digital.
Especially when push comes to shove, and a personal or a global crisis hits and you are forced to cut on extraneous expenditure and have less mental headroom for "soft notions" and fluffy invented social constructions like the above.
Good habits die easily.
In the end it is always about the end-result. A guy pretending to shoot film with an unloaded camera is a nutter.
Film is to put it simply and bluntly, just plain superior as an image recording medium on most counts, and in a fundamental way.
Where it could be said to be lacking is in perception (sociological halo effect) and in knowledge of the last mile problem. IE getting the film to actually display its data in an optimal way.
Again this is not hard, but we are working against some mightily stubborn windmills.
