why do you use film ????

yeah i know its fun, you like to use old cameras, you like something tangible
you like using chemistry and feeling some sort of "kinship" with people from like 100 years ago
but
why do you use film ?

There is something special about an 8x10 negative...or even a 14x17, for that matter. I'm forced to think, look, and slow down, even with 35mm.

Because film is a mystery. I can shoot digital and spend hours in front of a computer manipulating that image into anything I want it to be. All of those hours are the same. If I ever become so good at exposing film and making prints that all of the hours become the same, I will begin painting.

Because it's magic. After doing it many thousands of times, I'm still amazed every time an image comes up in a tray. The sense of awe has never left.

I'm also learning that film/darkroom can do so much more than just making representational images. The materials lend themselves to possibilities beyond what they were designed to do.

eddie said:

Because it's magic. After doing it many thousands of times, I'm still amazed every time an image comes up in a tray. The sense of awe has never left.

I'm also learning that film/darkroom can do so much more than just making representational images. The materials lend themselves to possibilities beyond what they were designed to do.

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Actually, I found it was similar watching a blank print go in one side and come out with a pretty color print on the other side of a digital printer. That's pretty magical too.

So I can make optical silver gelatin prints. I used to make Cibachrome prints, so much fun. I still make beautiful C prints from Medium format Portra and Ektar. I don't like the printing processes for digital and I hate sitting at a computer.
Best Regards Mike

Because I have to to get images out of my F100, RZ67PROII and Chamonix 45F1

Because film counts.

I want to make pictures out of light-sensitive materials because of their uniquely shocking, thrilling, literal, non-virtual, and physical relationship to subject matter. And furthermore I also want to celebrate the unique relationship that exists in the interaction between the genuine photograph and its viewer.

It is not possible to execute this particular creative cycle without starting with original images formed on film, plates, paper, or some equivalent substrate bearing a substance that becomes a picture because it was exposed to light.

I have many reasons, some more important than the others

Messing around with old junk is fun. I have an old motorcycle, old wooden boat, I'm especially fond of old log houses. Old view cameras are interesting objects.

I think different technologies have different ways of connecting people to the world. That's very important with some subjects. I've been photographing old log houses, some of them two hundred years old smoke cabins with black walls and tiny windows. I have noticed that with large format there's more time to perceive the atmosphere than with digital. This could be achieved with digital or even film slr too, but with the slow pace of photographing with large format this comes naturally. This affects not only photography, but perceiving one's surroundings in general. Once I spent six hours alone with my 9x12 Zeiss Ikon in a smoke- and tar-smelling dark cabin while it was raining outside. Heavy rain and shingle roof without ceiling made unique soundscape. With digital camera. With digital camera I would have been much quicker, but then the whole experience wouldn't have been so strong. I think old cameras have shaped my way of looking and being in the world.

Old camera makes you learn things that you don't have - or even can't - with more modern camera. it makes you think differently than the alternatives. Making all those calculations for exposure and other stuff is fun. And good for your brain too.

I like the challenge. For example I just bought few color filters and plan to take color pictures with color separation technique. I could take color pictures with my phone very easily, but that's not nearly as fun.

Film cameras are affordable. I don't have enough money to buy good enough digital camera. Someday I will, because that kind of practicality is needed sometimes.

For me it's mostly the fact that you do NOT get instant results and that you are usually limited in the amount of pictures and that certain films are quite expensive too.
I value it much more than a SD card I can reuse very often, even more so with motion picture film which is even more expensive and shot much faster than 36 frames of stills film.
I don't press the button 100 times and pick the one good frame from that sequence, I focus (both my concentration as well as the lens) and take one single shot at just the right time.
There is so much positive nervousness in that and once I took the shoot I have to wait with pleasant anticipation, I cannot simply see it and delete it and do it again on the spot.
I at least have to go home and develop it later that day or sometimes even have to wait for a couple of weeks when I am away from my darkroom and the chemicals.
That time in between shooting and seeing the results helps me to disconnect and see the shots a bit more from the outside, which is great and helps to be more objective.
Plus, there is no better feeling than to look at the negatives when they are drying and be like "Wow, can't remember that shot, oh this looks nice, ...".
Finally, film can look much better than digital images, if that specific look is what you are after.
Bernhard

Is there another way to make -real- photographs ?

macfred said:

Is there another way to make -real- photographs ?

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No.

I use film because that's what my cameras take.

macfred said:

Is there another way to make -real- photographs ?

Click to expand...

I fully agree. Even though I work with computers and digital devices professionally every day, I enjoy shots that were created purely in an analog/optical way.
Take a great shot, maybe even some cool double exposures or a certain in-camera effect or just something that looks very elegant WITHOUT using Photoshop or any further "tricks".
To be able to get a great shot and to develop it yourself without the need to "correct" millions of things in some software, that is what I call craftsmanship!

Because that's all that was available when I started 'proper' photography back in the 80s, and, being a total technophobe, it's what I've stuck with because digital confuses the hell out of me with its RAWs, TIFFs, JPEGs, etc. Also, as I don't own a computer, the editing that seems almost compulsory if you read articles on anything digital photography related, is beyond my scope, and would still be even if I DID own one.

I don't like chemistry and old. I don't like batteries and computers, either.

It's what I learned on and am most comfortable with. I do the "other photography" however film is the preferred process.

I use film because I like it and producing darkroom prints still has a certain magic. I don't like computers and I don't want to learn how to use Photoshop to make fake pictures. I also have no intention of joining the digital brigade and getting locked into a cycle of costly upgrading as technology becomes obsolete. My film cameras are already obsolete and it would cost a fortune to try to amass such a collection of digital equipment. As far as I am aware there is no digital true equivalent of MF especially 6x7.

Because I’ve learnt to deal with film

I can bring image and sound into synchronism on sprocket rollers, a Moviola, a flatbed editor, and for projection.

Permanence! I have files (and there are no photographs in digital photography, there are only digital files) on tapes, Zip disks, and floppies that contain files that are lost forever because their programs no longer exist. Looking at a CD or card does not give any information compared with an actual negative or print. An then there is computer failure. Just stumbled across a photo of one of my favorite dogs taken 50 years ago and a candid portrait of wife's cousin taken about 40 years ago when she was young and beautiful. She is giving copies to her adult children. Keep in mind that Hollywood stores digitally shot movies on film and not on digital media.
With film, a screw-up is almost always my fault and not that of a faulty SD card or reader or faulty camera electronics. I do use digital capture, both still and video,along with Adobe Premiere Pro suite, because for some applications I have no choice. Shooting film engages the mind because there are so many elements to keep in mind, the requirements for desired exposure, composition, etc., which are difficult to fix later.

Because I had enough of devices thinking for me, I'm a grown man and I can think for myself.

I have been using film since 1986 and I just do not feel any need to change it!

All my photos in my website are film originated...

Because the process is as important as the product. I just couldn't enjoy manipulating images in Lightroom anymore. It killed photography as an enjoyable hobby for me.

I have no other choice. My only other "camera" is an iPhone. And I'm too thrifty to replace perfectly good cameras no matter how old they are.