Film vs Digital (a brief history)
I thought this post was important, because we’re at a stage where there are so many tools for photography that it’s hard to know what’s what. Especially with the emergence of a generation of photographers and influencers using just their iPhones to create amazing photos and right now the flavour of the year; FaceTime shoots because of Covid19. In amongst all this it’s hard to tell what’s what, and why you’d use one over the other.
First things first. It really is a personal preference, I’ve put that in italics, because it’s so important! There’s not one tool for every situation, and there’s not a right or wrong way either. There’s definitely a better way for many jobs, but film and digital are just tools at our disposal, I just want to talk about the emergence of digital into the photography landscape.
There’s camps that are very much based on one being better than the other, and a degree of elitism, I thought I’d sit between the two.
I started with film when I was young, almost 20 years ago now, my dad had a development lab as part of his studio, they had a huge light bench, a large dark room, Hell Scanner, Kodak proof printer, large and medium format cameras, and then Phase One digital cameras finally moving to the 1Ds Mark III from Canon when that came out.
Back then, you’d have your Hasselblad set up with an instant back on it, so that you could shoot a photo, pull out the film, check you’ve got it right, and then switch to your negative film back, take the final shot a few times, and then when you’re reached the end of your roll, rewind your 10 photos, and then send it to the lab for development, scanning and proofing.
If you’ve never seen a Linotype-Hell Scanner, this is what gave high resolution prints once upon a time:
I just thought it was a cool piece of technology to see, if you’ve never heard of them. The cost of all these steps was not cheap, your Instant shots were expensive, and your development and running costs of having a dark room, and the required staff meant the costs were high, and things were A LOT slower.
If I was to compare running the two, you need three times the amount of staff for a film operation, and the running costs are not fixed like digital.
Much of the process to get to your finalised product with film took 1-2 days. With digital this can now be done in under 20 minutes if you’re rushing, or not at all if you’re completely calibrated and good to go.
Clients understood that the faster you needed the job the more expensive it got, and many photographers made their margin on rushes, as well as developing, scanning, delivering proofs, and enlarging for clients.
There were a lot more steps involved. 35mm was NOT used very much for commercial work, except for in journalism, sport and wildlife. It’s nice stuff, but you’ve probably noticed how grainy the photos are, you’d really be limited to 100 iso film, to make sure that wasn’t an issue, 400 even these days, is still quite grainy.
I’ve been very fortunate to be immerse in the technology, and the changes, and seen how they’ve both disrupted photography, and created new trends.
These days I switch between the two a lot, often without saying anything, or drawing attention to the mediums. I think there’s something so beautiful with film, it’s a slower process, it’s far more manual, and like many others will say, you do need to think a little more about how many photos you take. 36 exposures can go by really quickly considering that’s all you get in a roll of film.
With digital the look of your photos is generally decided AFTER you’ve shot your photos, with film, you need to be aware of the advantages of the stocks you use before you shoot, and many new photographers or photographers who aren’t familiar with the medium are unaware that much of how your photo looks is also decided by the lab you send it to. In the sense that the scanner decides if the shot is over or underexposed and will adjust accordingly, pushing shots that you may have wanted underexposed up a stop so that it appears increasingly grainy, and vice versa.
Also, there really are no new large scale developers/scanners AGFA and Konica ceased in 2005, with only Fuji and Noritsu being the only brands who have continued to service and maintain their labs with help from Epson and Kodak as the suppliers. The machines themselves are often 90’s nostalgia machines due to their big blocky nature, and archaic interfaces. With most of us, myself included, relying on Facebook groups to garner knowledge, and solve problems from our cameras that are often as old, if not older than us (a joke on many shoots I’ve made with my cameras that were made in 96’ and 02’ respectively).
So let’s get down the nitty gritty, if you’re going to edit your photos, film can be a nightmare, due to the uneven chemical nature of grain. Grain isn’t like signal noise in digital, grain appears because of the chemical process as the silver halide is left behind, especially in areas where you’ve underexposed. Digital noise is similar in the sense that it appears as a byproduct of taking a photo, however with film grain, it’s colour neutral, whereas noise generally appears as both colour and luminance differences (luminance meaning how bright each dot is), digital noise is often quite even, whereas because of the chemical nature of film, it’s often quite random, and in many ways far more aesthetically pleasing because of its random textured nature, and lack of colour difference. TLDR for this paragraph, film grain is random, digital noise isn’t.
When it comes to retouching, this means with film, it can be all but impossible to clean up a photo the way you would with digital. It means what you see is what you get, and for many this reflects pure laziness, I often see it that way when there’s arrogance, or someone discounts the skill it takes another to get a great shot. It’s a large and vast medium, especially now that we have camera phones, drones, and variety of high definition video formats that are as good as stills, it’s easy to get caught in a niche, or not want to break with what you know.
With digital there probably has been such a large push back because of the almost clinical nature and similarity in many peoples shots, considering the megapixel race this might be quite a stark reminder, but often more detail isn’t what we want. Neither is seeing ourselves in high definition, it isn’t always a pleasant site if we’re having a bad hair day, or we’ve cut ourselves shaving (as I have on occasion) or have a nice big pimple on our face. The thing with film photos is those details are often missed whether because the shots under or over exposed, slightly out of focus, or the film is high grain or a cheap stock. With film those imperfections feel lived in, with digital, they often feel like the sign of an amateur.
Let’s get back to our history lesson! With film many of the current users, didn’t grow up with it, and many of the nuances, and annoyances we had with film, are seen as its quirks, and reasons to shoot with it, the limited nature of the amount of exposures, the randomness, and analogue process, and the rather expensive nature of the medium.
With digital whilst storage is inexpensive, the barrier to taking a good photo can be a lot higher. Film comes with its filters built in, there’s mood and texture already there, they don’t need to be added later.
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
These same reasons, were the reason digital gained quick popularity, and all but crushed film (Kodak only had its first year of profit in over a decade last year). Your raw production costs not including staff for a film shoot in a commercial studio could be thousands of dollars a day. Switching to digital removed those, and sped up your timeline and therefore the amount of work you were able to take on: You didn’t have to wait, you could do ANYTHING to your files. You weren’t limited by what stocks you used, and you didn’t have to spend so much time changing film backs, and checking your exposure, you could look over at your screen and see a preview far quicker.
Despite the relatively expensive nature of these high end cameras (like this modern one here which would be around $80,000-100,000 AUD), if you ran a studio you could start making those production costs back very quickly, justifying the high price tag of these commercial cameras.
HOWEVER, with these changes, the barrier to entry lowered, dramatically, especially as the costs dropped in the consumer market due to the rise of full frame cameras from Canon first with the 1Ds and then the 5D’s and Nikon with the D3 and then the D700. A quick history lesson, Canon crushed Nikon here due to the high megapixel count of their cameras for a long time and their advancement of having full frame cameras before Nikon; the original 5D launched in 2005 had 12.8 megapixels and the 5D II launched in 2008 had 21.1 . The expanded iso ranges of these cameras as well far exceeded where you could take film shots. Nikon lagged behind taking 2 years longer than Canon to embrace the full frame format.
Sure these cameras were expensive but so is a years supply of film, not to mention the operating costs of a dark room or sending to a development lab could easily rival the investment in a commercial camera from Phase One. There are also a generation of photographers who are unaware of the context and history of why we are where we are, and some who are either stuck in the past, or quick to judge others for why they choose to shoot the way they do.
Many who started on film, hate it, because of the amount of time it takes to get things right, many who started with digital hate it, because of the lack of feeling and the time you often need to spend in post production. Some shoot on their iPhone and do a better job than both. The point is wherever you sit, take stock of why, and continue to produce new work, try new things, and don’t get caught in old habits. If there’s one thing you should take away from this article, a lot has happened.
Happy shooting.
