Necessity To Nostalgia
January 27, 2004
Will film ever die? Would I mourn the loss?
No and it probably won't ever be truly dead. People still make daguerreotypes, use vacuum tubes in electronics and listen to cassette tapes despite "more advanced" alternatives being available. It will pass from the standard it is now to a historical curiosity at an ever increasing pace only hanging on in the places digital imaging hasn't yet been able to claim. I have yet to see a digital image with the beauty and color saturation of chromes (slides) or the amazing detail of large formats like 4"x5". There are still jobs where film is definitely the best choice.
Since I don't believe it will die, mourning seems a bit silly. Will I miss using film? Absolutely and not a chance.
I will miss the smell of a freshly opened film canister, the mechanical whine of a high speed motor drive, the mystery and anticipation that builds just before you hold your negatives up to the light to see what you've captured. I'll miss the innate coolness of contact sheets, the little arrows and numbers between the sprocket holes, the magic of watching your image appear on a blank piece of photo paper in a tray of chemicals.
I won't miss having to change rolls after 36 exposures, needing to keep three different speeds of film in my bag at all times, wasting the rest of a roll if you needed to change film speed, having to wait while color film is processed, the smell and the stains from the processing chemicals, the bulk of storing negatives and prints. Also on the list: waiting for your eyes to adjust after emerging from the darkroom (aka mole squint), wasting 5 sheets of paper adjusting by trial and error to get one decent print, accidentally rolling the leader back into the cartridge and not remembering later if it was exposed.
Digital photography has so many practical advantages for me that it has completely replaced film. I literally haven't shot a roll of film for 3-4 years. The quality of images produced by my current digital gear is more than good enough for most anything I need to do but I still can't convince myself to get rid of my Canon EOS-3 film body. I guess I'll dust it off when I get nostalgic.
What do you think? What will and won't *you* miss about film cameras?
In the hands of the general public, the people who snap pictures at family gatherings with a $50 Vivitar camera, film will almost certainly be all but phased out. With an equivalent to the aforementioned camera now available in digital form for under $200 and as little as $100, it's only a matter of time. The photographer no longer has to conserve pictures as much due to the roll only having 24 or 36 pictures available. The person can take as many pictures as they have memory cards available, without having to worry about how much it will cost to develop. There is no longer a such thing as a "wasted shot." There will be more chances to "capture the moment."
On the other hand, the professional arena will use film for quite a while to come, due to many of the reasons you note and more. When the last professional puts his/her film camera on the shelf after opening the shiny box with the fancy new digital camera, film will continue to be the medium of choice for artists. It may be a small market by then, but it will exist. Film will never be completely gone. This generation and probably the next will live their lives with small, rectangular boxes of 35mm film available, if not at the corner store, at the nearest photography store.
What will I miss? Negatives. Every time a new technology comes around that eschews a hard copy in favor of something digitized, it makes me a bit sad. Digital photos are nice, but what about 50 years from now, when you have a CD-ROM full of JPEGs? What if neither format has been used in decades? How can you get to your originals? With negatives, as long as the film itself doesn't break down, you have easy access. I mean, people have collections of books, some books being 250 years old. In the year 2250, is someone going to have a collection of ebooks? I just worry about persistence of information on a digital medium.
In addition to that, the process of taking a roll of film and processing it into a useable roll of negatives is an enjoyable experience to me. As is the whole darkroom process. It feels like more of a process with more work to get to the outcome than transferring a wad of pictures from a USB card reader onto a hard drive, then sending it off to a printer. (Not that I'm saying digital photography requires less skill or talent, not at all.)
I don't know. Maybe I'm a luddite. There are a lot of things I love about film photography. But then again, there are things I love about digital photography. Luckily there is room for both.
Posted by: Alex on January 29, 2004 01:17 AMI've come late to the party, but I want to dance...
I'm one of the few who do not own a digital camera, nor is a digital camera high on my wants list. Not because I don't want one, but because I desperately love my old school lomo. I also recently bought a Fed-5 and have been experimenting with that, as well. I love the old smell of the lomo, the quirkiness of it, the manual advance... not to mention the brilliant colors and the occasional double/triple/quadruple exposures.
That said, however, I think I could live without the cost of developing all that film. I recently misplaced a bag of rolls that needed to be developed... and while I mourn the loss of all I'd shot... I've just saved myself a ton of money :-/
Trish
Posted by: Trish on February 16, 2004 12:20 PM