Why shoot analogue colour photos?

ChrisGalway · 2025-09-16T06:16:45-0400

This post was stimulated by https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...p-better-than-kodak-gold-or-colorplus.215894/ but rather than go off-topic on that thread, I'll make the comment here:

If you are going to digitally post-process colour photos (colour negatives or positives), why bother to shoot analogue rather than digital (RAW)?

I think I can be convinced that shooting analogue B&W and scanning might be worthwhile ... to give a distinctive "look" to the final retro image, but surely there is less of a case for colour?

Of course, one perfectly valid response is: because it's so much more fun shooting film! And I'm sure there are many other good reasons, but I'm curious to know them.

I love shooting film, and all my B&W work uses film which is scanned, but when it comes to colour for prints etc, I now use a digital camera. I should add that my main hobby is stereo transparencies, viewed in an optical viewer, and digital displays come nowhere near the quality of a transparency viewed optically or directly, so of course I use film.

Frank53 · 2025-09-16T06:26:06-0400

Interesting question.
I shoot a lot of BW film which I print in the darkroom or scan sometimes.
never bothered about color, but since I have a digital camera, I use that for color. So I don’t have the answer.

Don_ih · 2025-09-16T06:27:08-0400

I think lots of people have answered that exact question on here numerous times. It mostly boils down to they consider film to generate a preferable result to digital - a result they claim they cannot get a digital capture to have.

Essentially, it's personal preference and doesn't require justification.

loccdor · 2025-09-16T07:01:13-0400

Without giving a long list of reasons (there's more than 20), I'll say that shooting positive film, especially Ektachrome E100 in medium or large format, will give you a result closest to a typical digital photograph. With other films (especially color negative) and smaller formats, the "look" will morph farther away from a typical digital shot.

brian steinberger · 2025-09-16T08:12:39-0400

I’ve just recently given color film a go again for first time in 20 years. Been shooting black and white forever and developing and printing myself. I never did serious personal color work with digital besides family shots.

For me of course it starts with the fact that I can use all my film cameras. That is an obvious plus. As far as the results go, I find film to handle highlights much better than digital can (short of stitching photos). Highlights blown or nearing blown on digital IMO look terrible. Film many times is able to be able to recover atleast something. I have been impressed with my first few months of getting back into color film. From my initial tests I’ve found that for me anyway, the magic starts to happen at medium format so I’m sticking to that. I’m shooting all Kodak negative film, my favorites being Portra 160 and Gold 200 and having a local lab develop and scan them on a Noritsu, getting them close, then I do minor adjustments in LR. I never had consistent results scanning myself and using something like Negative Lab Pro. It was too hit and miss. Once I went to the Noritsu that’s when I was very impressed.

It’s all about what you like, and what you want your final look to be. But it does take some trial and error, particularly with negative film. For the little bit of color work I do, I’m impressed so far and am looking forward to starting a portfolio of color shots. Just have fun!

halfaman · 2025-09-16T08:26:48-0400

A couple of rolls per year of BW film aside, I shot only color and mainly on MF. For me, an amateur photographer that don't need to deliver anything to anybody but myself, the process is as important as the result. And I prefer much more the film process than the digital one, even if I end in front of a computer (which I try not). So yes, film is much more fun the digital for me. The rest is driven by perseverance and dedication like any other hobby. I don't shot "my thing" with a digital camera since 2013 and I have never regretted it a single time.

Printing is what personally gives me most pleasure, just scanning a photo fells like I didn't get to the finish line.

djdister · 2025-09-16T08:49:30-0400

Here's my counterintuitive and counterculture answer - I shoot color negative film so that I have many more options when converting to B&W for digital printing. For example, it is much easier to bring down the tone of the sky or bringing up the tone of foliage when converting to B&W than when working with a B&W scan.

gary mulder · 2025-09-16T08:54:46-0400

What I appreciate in taking pictures with color film and printing them in the dark room is the honesty and bare hands feeling it brings. Once exposed the film the final outcome is almost completely determined. There is very little that can and has to be altered.

Carnie Bob · 2025-09-16T09:46:24-0400

I shoot large format colour and bw film because I can hand process it and solarize or cross process, which then is the starting point for my work. The randomness of this
is what I love rather than than the directness of doing it in photoshop

koraks · 2025-09-16T10:32:14-0400

ChrisGalway said:
one perfectly valid response is: because it's so much more fun shooting film!

That's one part.

I asked this question of a visual artist who works mostly/solely with color negative and she said "grain". She feels it's essential to her work.

For me, personally, the answer leans a little towards the initial one - i.e., it's fun. But I have to admit that rationally speaking, I don't have an answer to the question. In all honesty, if I want to get the job done in the most technically proficient and efficient way, I prefer to shoot digital, which also helps me to focus on the image as such instead of all manner of technical sideshows which may be fun, but don't (for me) contribute much or anything at all to the end result.

Additional arguments would IMO relate more strongly to a full analog workflow, not a hybrid one:
* Doing it differently than all other people are doing (esp. when also wet printing) and deriving pleasure from this.
* Having an 'unbroken' material workflow where the photo never enters the 'parallel universe' of the digital world, which may be important to some from a philosophical or emotional viewpoint.

From a technical, objective viewpoint, I really cannot come up with a very good answer, to be honest. At least not one that I could argue for, personally.

BrianShaw · 2025-09-16T10:44:05-0400

Lots of different reasons. For me it's more about the "analog" equipment I have and know how they eprform, and the digital equipment I'm not willing to buy.

mshchem · 2025-09-16T10:58:55-0400

ChrisGalway said:
This post was stimulated by https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...p-better-than-kodak-gold-or-colorplus.215894/ but rather than go off-topic on that thread, I'll make the comment here:

If you are going to digitally post-process colour photos (colour negatives or positives), why bother to shoot analogue rather than digital (RAW)?

I think I can be convinced that shooting analogue B&W and scanning might be worthwhile ... to give a distinctive "look" to the final retro image, but surely there is less of a case for colour?

Of course, one perfectly valid response is: because it's so much more fun shooting film! And I'm sure there are many other good reasons, but I'm curious to know them.

I love shooting film, and all my B&W work uses film which is scanned, but when it comes to colour for prints etc, I now use a digital camera. I should add that my main hobby is stereo transparencies, viewed in an optical viewer, and digital displays come nowhere near the quality of a transparency viewed optically or directly, so of course I use film.

This is an extremely good question. I still shoot color negs to allow for an occasional darkroom print. I really don't understand why so many young people are obsessed with film when it's chopped and diced in PS to create a picture.

4season · 2025-09-16T11:58:42-0400

No particular reason, sometimes it's fun to shoot with film. Color negative film is less linear than digital, and the shadow areas in particular block up pretty quickly, while extreme highlight values become compressed. Sometimes those characteristics produce results I wouldn't have considered otherwise.

I'd like to re-explore Fuji Velvia transparency film for it's resolving power, but ouch, not at today's prices. Also kind of tricky to really nail slide film exposure as it's useful exposure latitude is so narrow.

xkaes · 2025-09-16T12:00:39-0400

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see anyone mention -- "Because I have a lot of color negatives that were taken LONG before a got a digital camera that even could come close to what color film could do". I won't venture to guess how many negatives I have that fall into that category -- and I still don't have a digital camera that can match my 4x5 color shots.

albireo · 2025-09-16T12:02:51-0400

I like the look of well exposed, well developed and well scanned C41 film. Yes: in a CONTROLLED hybrid workflow, C41 film has a look, and Gold 200 looks completely different from e.g. Orwo NC500 everything else being fixed. People who deny this confuse "look" with "colour grading" and/or are not in full control of their hybrid workflow.

I am (or I was, as I sold my digital cameras long ago) unable to obtain this look I seek with digital equipment.

It's me though: I am sure many people are able to, and I'm sure many people love working in Photoshop and can readily make a DSLR image look like MY scans of my Gold 200 rolls, but I can't, and I'm not interested in expensive digital cameras and extensive postprocessing of digital RAW DSLR images, so it's a win -win for me: I get to produce images I like with simpler cameras, simple processing and if I've exposed and developed correctly I'm basically already there where I want to be.

By the way I love the look of scanned grain, or in this case, scanned dye clouds. I hated how my Fuji X series digital cameras (Xtrans sensor) rendered fine details.

koraks · 2025-09-16T12:21:41-0400

xkaes said:
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see anyone mention -- "Because I have a lot of color negatives that were taken LONG before a got a digital camera

Well, the question is why people shoot it presently - not why they scan existing archives. Your note of course is very relevant for the extant archives of color negatives that can be digitized for easy sharing, print output etc. But if you pick up a camera today, and you have digital post-processing in mind, why shoot color negative? That's how I interpret the question.

albireo said:
I hated how my Fuji X series digital cameras (Xtrans sensor) rendered fine details.

There's definitely a difference in how systems render fine details. This has been the main reason why I've recently mostly stopped shooting 35mm color negative. I ran into problems with a lack of acutance that I could only solve by either moving up considerably in recording format (incurring high costs and severe penalties in mobility/flexibility) or using digital for that sort of work. The latter makes the most sense for me. I can see how the coin could drop in the opposite direction for others.

Pieter12 · 2025-09-16T12:26:04-0400

I shoot BW film because I can process it and make darkroom prints. I can’t do that with color film, so color is digital for me.

Klaus Mähring · 2025-09-16T12:32:10-0400

I prefer grain over grid.

MattKing · 2025-09-16T12:54:46-0400

I'm fairly good at using colour film.
Digital is more of a learning process.
I'm also fond of medium format - the lenses, the inherent depth of field, how the cameras (in my case mostly Mamiya) handle, how I instinctually work with the equipment - and to come close to duplicating that with digital would probably be impossible without stupid and essentially pointless expenditure.

xkaes · 2025-09-16T12:54:52-0400

koraks said:
But if you pick up a camera today, and you have digital post-processing in mind, why shoot color negative? That's how I interpret the question.

If I'm shooting 4x5, I'm shooting film -- and I assume, for the same reason, that's why 120 film is still easy to get. And if you are utilizing a smaller format, you still should think about what film X can achieve vs what digital camera Y can provide.

koraks · 2025-09-16T13:18:41-0400

xkaes said:
If I'm shooting 4x5, I'm shooting film

Well, then the question could be asked, why do you shoot 4x5? In my mind, the format you record on is derived somehow from what you try to achieve.

xkaes said:
And if you are utilizing a smaller format, you still should think about what film X can achieve vs what digital camera Y can provide.

Yup, hence my closing remarks in #16.

Pieter12 · 2025-09-16T13:50:53-0400

Klaus Mähring said:
I prefer grain over grid.

I have a very nice scan of Portra 400 dye clouds that I overlay on digital files that takes away some of the digital "curse."

Rayt · 2025-09-16T13:53:30-0400

Ideally I’d want to take photos at sunrise and a few hours before sunset. When I don’t have control when I can take a photo then C41 is preferred whether XP2 or lower contrast color films like Portra. On road trips I always have one camera loaded with Portra 400.

Chan Tran · 2025-09-16T15:11:10-0400

I used to shoot color negative film but I printed them in my darkroom. Now having no darkroom I shoot color slide film and project them. It's fun to shoot film although expensive.

abruzzi · 2025-09-16T15:15:20-0400

I gave up shooting color negative film because I want to be able to do processes at home, and getting the color inversion correct was an impossible task for me. My color sensitivity is far weaker than many other, plus R-G colorblindness. I asked my brother once what he sees when he sees a rainbow, and exactly like me we only see blue and yellow, all the rest isn't there to us.

I do shoot E6 because there is an overwhelming sense of magic that an image fully colored and rendered appears on a sheet of plastic (ok, polyester or acetate) just by shining some light on it and washing it in a few chemicals. If makes me think of the Arthur C. Clark comment "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Ok its understood and isn't real magic, but it feels like it. Consider this a slight variation on "its fun."

Since E6 films have significant dynamic range limitations, I have outfitted myself with digital options--a digital back for my view cameras, a MF digital camera (Mamiya), and a few smaller format cameras, mostly bought used because they were extremely cheap.

A year or two ago I sold off all my 35mm C41 because I don't use it. I still have about 20 rols of 120 C41 including some Portra 160 and 800, and a fair amount of Fuji Pro 400H. When I get though them, I won't buy any more.

Why shoot analogue colour photos?

ChrisGalway

Frank53

Don_ih

loccdor

brian steinberger

halfaman

djdister

gary mulder

Carnie Bob

koraks

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BrianShaw

mshchem

4season

xkaes

albireo

koraks

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Pieter12

Klaus Mähring

MattKing

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xkaes

koraks

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Pieter12

Rayt

Chan Tran

abruzzi

Why shoot analogue colour photos?

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