Why 35mm film?

I've been playing around with an old Nikon FE for the past six months or so but am still just dabbling. I'm enjoying it but I keep thinking about the variety of medium format film cameras or... Other methods of capturing light. I'm wondering if anyone would share their thoughts on why in particular they chose 35 mm film. Convenience? Simplicity? Economics? Back to basics? Image quality or a certain "look?“ What are the real strengths of 35 mm film photography? Thanks in advance.

I chose the 35mm format when I bought my first camera in 1977 because:
1. I want an SLR with eyelevel viewfinder with built in meter. You can do that with MF but requires significant cost and they are not standard but rather accesories.
2. Motor driven camera at decent rate. You can have motor driven MF but these are slow.
3. Easy film to project slide. You can project MF slides too but MF slide projectors are rare.
4. Cost. I paid $750 for my 35mm camera body and a 50mm lens but a Hasselblad basic kit is at least twice that back then. Of course without metering nor eyelevel viewfinder. And the basic kit with the 500 doesn't have instant return mirror. The 2000FC I think did but more expensive still.

I have way, way, way too many 35mm cameras.
And lots of medium format ones too.
They are all capable of giving really good results - in some cases I even get extraordinary results.
But they all work a bit differently, and those differences make them very pleasing to use in the circumstances they are suited for.
Size is one example - my Olympus XA and Olympus Stylus Epic cameras are ideal when I need a camera that can go just about anywhere (dry).
Flexibility is another example - my Olympus OM bodies and lenses and accessories and flashes can be configured in a really wide variety of ways, which makes them usable in a really wide range of circumstances.
Quick response is another example - my various auto-focus/auto-wind Canon EOS bodies with (mostly) kit lenses respond quickly and easily in "snapshot" type circumstances, while providing more advanced features (e.g. eye control focus) capability in more demanding circumstances, and they are ridiculously cheap on the used market.
My Kodak Retina IIIc is just a wonderful tool to use, even though it requires a distinctly different approach.
And my Olympus Trip 35 is just so simple.
And every single one of them has produced for me either satisfyingly impactful projected slides, negatives that can be used to create effective enlargements up to and larger than 11"x14" in size, or both.
So my answer is - why not?

A balance of quality cost and convenience. With a side of automation that comes in handy at times.

The 35mm still-photography format was invented by Leitz for 2 reasons:

-) yielding small cameras
-) making it possible to use off the shelf cine films (in theory; practically they used other film)

I think the answe today may be different that the answer in previous decades. I bought my first camera in around 1992 (a Nikkormat FTN, I still have), and then 35mm was the high quality choice for amateurs that couldn’t afford medium format. It was ubiquitous. 110, disc film, were all dying or dead. Manufacturers had mostly figured out how to make 35mm easy loading for the cheap consumer cameras. APS wasn’t here yet as one last gasp of a simpler loading format for consumers. And medium format had very little presence outside the professional world. (I knew about it, but in the entire 90s I never saw or know anyone that owned a medium format camera.)

Today the calculation is very different. The “death” of film has made many medium format cameras very cheap. The internet has made them easy to find and buy. It has also made accessible all the old medium format cameras like folders from the 30s-60s. Why today would you choose 35mm? (Aside from having chosen sometime last century and just keeping on with it.). To me size and convenience are the main reasons. I shoot a lot of medium format, but 35mm cameras are far more portable, especially when you get to cameras with interchangeable lenses. There are more lenses, and good quality zooms, allowing me to more easily tailor a small set of lenses to where I want to shoot without breaking my back.

For convenience, most of the time I hate 36 exposure rolls on 35mm, and love the 15 exposures that 6x4.5 gets me on 120, but if I’ve doing anything extended like travel, or even just an all day photo expedition where I know I’ll shoot 30+ exposures, the extended time I get before I change rolls, has its benefits.

I love/hate the fact you don't have to reload every 5 or 12 exposures.

I think 35mm hits the sweet spot of good enough while small enough. There are always tradeoffs with format but for me 35mm is fun because of the quality and convenient size (of the negative and equipment).

Medium format and larger tips the balance in favor of larger prints, but of course the tradeoff is size/weight/convenience/cost.

AgX said:

The 35mm still-photography format was invented by Leitz for 2 reasons:

-) yielding small cameras
-) making it possible to use off the shelf cine films (in theory; practically they used other film)

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Yep! That sez it all! Once excessive automation makes cameras as large or larger and heavier than MF, go MF. There is room for a variety of film sizes.

It's cost efficient ($ per frame) and I hardly need a quality higher than that of 35 mm. What else is there?

I also have MF camera for special occasions, when I need great resolution, or when I need to slow down the time significantly, for recreational purposes.

It's funny.
When i looked at books of Photographs/Photographers.....circa 1978 and earlier... many of the "Iconic" pictures were NOT shot with 35mm, a lot of them were, but not like to day.
How many people own a MF or LF digital camera compared to film of 1980.?
Anyway.......size and convenience. I could shoot 25 or 35 frames without reloading new film. And the film was relatively inexpensive.
There are folders that are not too "bulky" i suppose, but again, you need to re-stuff them more often.
For a hobbyist "Street Photographer" and for photos of opportunity, it is hard to beat 35mm.
There are always trade-offs and contrary opinions of course.

Another reason. Back in the day, 60's~80's, 35mm would be able to give everyone at least acceptable 'album sized' prints. At first 3.5 x 5 inches and later 4 x 6 inch prints, and 99% of all pictures shot on 35mm film wound up as these sizes. Sure, there were dedicated amateurs printing larger sizes in their own darkrooms. And the occasional person would come in asking for an 8 x 10 of some print. However at that size enlargement customers were often disappointed in the results. What had looked sharp on an album sized print sometimes fell apart at 8 x 10. This was mostly due to customer technique rather than small format. Most poor sharpness was found to be slightly missed focus (2/3 of the problem) or camera movement (the other 1/3). Then customers didn't want to pay for the print. This problem became bad enough at the camera shop where I worked that I got into the habit of examining the negative with a 10X magnifier before I sent it off to the lab for an enlargement. It was easier to show the customer before why I would not recommend a certain negative for enlargement.
Even in my own darkroom at home I didn't like to print my 35mm negs larger than 6 x 9 inches, or 6 x 8 inches for half frame. And I used a tripod where practical, (so much for small and compact) trying to afford myself every help to achieve as high a resolution negative as I could with this 'miniature' format.

Why 35mm "won" is a bit of a chicken and egg issue. In my opinion, it's because Leica and Contax elected to make quality lenses and cameras in the format and then post WW-II, Japan followed that lead. Despite Kodak's continual efforts to try to nudge the consumer market away from 35mm, it was rare to find a "semi-professional" or "prosumer" camera in formats like 828, 620, or 127. While Rollei, Contax, and Kodak did make "prosumer" SLR's for 126 film, by that time 35mm was too well established for them to be much of a threat. The final attempt was APS, which first got caught in a classic market squeeze between "one-use" cameras and 35mm, and then got crushed by digital.

jnantz said:

I love/hate the fact you don't have to reload every 5 or 12 exposures.

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I will second that. I just put my eighth roll of film in a Mamiya TLR, and I am still fumbling around quite a bit. And after 12 shots I'll have to do it again. Loading a 35mm camera is much easier for me.

I also much prefer the eye-level prism viewfinder of the 35mm, compared to waist-level viewing the ground-glass TLR with it's reversed image.

An additional advantage to 35mm is a wider selection of films. Right now I am shooting Fomapan R and ADOX Scala 160 b&w reversal films in 35mm - neither is available in 120.

But the b&w negatives from the TLR do have the advantage over fast 35mm film if you don't like a lot film grain.

In this day and age, I mainly shoot 35mm because most of the lenses are compatible with my digital cameras, so I don't need to buy a bunch of new equipment to enjoy it. I also like the range of film available, the portability, and the ease of use. Also, my projector won't do larger formats, and my 3D viewer only does 35mm.

But mainly, it's just for fun. If I'm shooting something serious, it's hard to justify the lower image quality. It's no fun having a once a year photo limited in what you can do with it due to a tiny negative.

In 1977, when I got "serious" about photography, the 35mm SLR was, as far as I knew, the best you could get. I didn't even realize there was anything "better". I had never seen a medium format camera outside of a portrait studio...and those were (to my mind at the time) obviously not something that anybody like me would ever want or need. Looking back, I was really into the FSA photographers & work and Ansel Adams...but I really do not remember ever being even a bit interested in what camera/lens/film/developer those photogrphers used until decades later.

Why did I choose 35mm as a nine year old in 1982 Vs why I continue to shoot more 35mm than any other film?

So as a kid I learned photography on a Zeiss-Ikon folding 120 medium format camera in the late 70s. I still use it (most recent roll completed two days ago) but it has it's limitations. For all the wonderful attributes of the larger negative and the 6x6 square format...the camera has it's limitations. The lens is what it is...75mm Novar with no practical way to change lenses for a wider or telephoto lens....of course no zoom. No meter, though I can certainly live with this. For modern fast films, there's a limited range of shutter speeds. One often has to stop down to f11 even on average days with anything other than Ektar or Pan-F.

Sure there are medium format SLRs, but cost! Whoa...no way I can afford to buy one. Certainly no way my parents were buying me one when I was 9 (think back to 1982)

So...up to the age of 9 I'd been borrowing the Zeiss-Ikon from my dad, and using a cheap 110 camera as well as the Minolta 110 SLR. Circa 1982 both dad and I realised that 120 was becoming difficult to get D&P in 24 hours, 110 wasn't cutting it for quality even with the SLR....so 35mm was the clear way to go. 126 and 127 were not considered. A more complex 120 camera would have been very expensive and still had the problem of increasingly difficult high street processing. What neither of us realised at the time was all the pro's using 120 and 220.

One day while in the channel islands we came across a camera shop offering a Praktica MTL5 kit with a 50mm CZJ Tessar lens and a free film for something silly like £53 if memory serves. Channel islands, so no VAT....Dad bought himself and me a MTL5 kit each....and I instantly realised this was the perfect compromise between cost, size, weight and quality. The camera is bulky and clunky by early 80s standards but it is a functioning SLR camera with M42 screw mount so lots of decent glass available then and now.

I find the quality and detail of the negative to be perfectly good enough. The convenience of having 24 or 36 exposures in one cassette is great - though I admit sometimes having 12 on the 6x6 folder is an advantage.

I've owned many 35mm cameras since, and to this day have plenty to choose from including pocketable compact 35mm cameras (especially 50s and 60s models) to SLRs from Praktica and Nikon. One advantage of the Nikon SLRs is that the lenses work on DSLR bodies too (and often vice versa). I also have a bunch of Tamron Adaptall II lenses with adaptors for my Praktica B bodies (four of) and NIkon SLR/DSLR bodies.

In short, 35mm is convenient and the quality is good enough for me. Though sometimes 6x6 on 120 wins out with that Zeiss-Ikon folder or my Kiev 6. Then of course sometimes I just want to do something silly like load a century old box camera with Ektar. But that's another story.

I suspect that 35mm will be the first of the present film formats to go and sheet film will be the last.

35mm film based pictures offer the worst technical quality in regular photographic production. Everything bigger offers dramatically less grain, more sharpness, greater detail, and stunningly superior tonal quality. Also consider that 120 format roll-film and sheet film, typically 4x5 and 8x10 sizes, are just as easy to process.

So why 35mm? Reasons:

Small hand-holdable lightweight cameras.
Quick to use for unpredictable photo opportunities.
Long or very long focal lengths for distant subjects.
Fast lenses for low light work.
Fast shutter speeds for moving subjects.
Availability of automated functions: exposure, focus, film transport.
Many shots, usually 36, between re-loadings.
Low film costs per exposure.

Those features were acceptable in the past as compensation for the severely compromised picture quality. But that doesn't apply any more. Everything 35mm could do is matched or exceeded by present day digital cameras which deliver more pictures, better, quicker, cheaper, and at a fraction of the effort and mess of 35mm.

But (and it is a big BUT) if you are truly committed to making pictures out of light sensitive materials, which assuredly digital does not do, and you want the convenience and you accept the quality downgrade then 35mm might have a continuing role and my pessimism is out of order.

The 35mm format is least likely to get much use by me with my production firmly entrenched in medium format. For many years it was my bread and butter format producing images to the Ilfochrome Classic media, and by comparison with medium format, it is much harder to do it well in 35mm than larger formats, with automation a major hindrance at times.

Today my elderly EOS 1N, more than capable of munching through 36 exposures in 2.8 seconds (3 seconds, then!) is relegated to the occasional happy snap or B&W use.

I share the view with Maris, above, that 35mm will be the first format to disappear, leaving just medium format and a selection of 4x5 (LF) sheets.

Medium format cameras have been cheerfully detached from the march and progression of automation and technology built into progressively more and more 35mm SLRs: consider, for instance, what lies within a Nikon F6 (still a 35mm camera, after all, loaded to the hilt with technology), and then put it beside a Hasselblad 500CM.What do you see? One is a photographer's tool for creating his vision free of the floss of technology, while the other would be right at home, and entirely capable, shooting sports, wildlife or portraits. The F6 has its own meter and can think for itself. The 500CM requires established knowledge of hand-held metering in many, many circumstances. Once you have tapped your inner potential for working and thinking independently of technology in a camera, and creating work that makes people stand up and take notice, there is no real appeal to the 35mm format, not much bigger than a special edition postage stamp as it is.

Nobody's mentioned Kodachrome yet...

If you've been shooting as long as I have there was no other option, 120 was ten times more expensive and 135 cameras could be bought for very little money (SLRs were expensive but there was a whole bunch of compacts sold very cheaply). Compared to 126, 110 & disc the 135 format was massive.

Montanawildlives said:

I'm wondering if anyone would share their thoughts on why in particular they chose 35 mm film.

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I used 127 and 120 medium format film when I was in elementary school and high school.

I used 126 small format film when I was in college.

I began shooting 35mm when I worked for a newspaper.

I went back to 120 medium format film when I began shooting weddings for a portrait studio.

I began using 4x5 inch, 8x10 inch, and larger film when I worked for a copy and reproduction service.

When I began shooting scientific images for a medical school, I primarily used 35mm.

I now use 35mm, 120, 4x5 film, and digital. I choose 35mm film when I think it will work best for the subject and the customer.

I like 35mm for lots of projects, size, weight, flexible, best selection of long lens, sports and action, wildlife, 35mm works best.

I used 35mm since the 1960's for slides until the 1980's when I switched to color print so I could have prints made of the photographs of my children. I inherited my father's Mamiya C330 but I never enjoyed using the camera, so I upgraded to Hasselblad about ten years ago. Now 35mm is used for times when I do not have the time to spend working on the composition and 6x6 is used for serious color and black & white work [basically 98% of the time]. I enjoy 6x6 and 4"x5" for darkroom work much more than 35mm.

Why choose 35mm film? Because it is all that will fit 35mm cameras!

The question sounds binary - why choose 35mm film over all other formats? It is not binary. Sometimes I use 120 film, sometimes I use 35mm film. There is a camera size choice, there is a quality choice, there is a price choice. And sometimes I just want to use a particular camera.

35 can be brief, fun, exciting ... in a much different way than any other format. But those who limit themselves to 35 don't know what they are missing. All formats, all processes have something that attracts at times more than the rest. There is no better or worse, just in some applications one is (or can be) more preferable over any another.