Deardorff – © John Neel
I have this bug for shooting film again. It has been gnawing at me for a few weeks. I get this bug frequently in recent times.
It is in my veins. I shot film for at least half of my photo life. In fact, I used both film and digital up until a few years ago. I was a dual user for a long time. I used them both as I saw fit to do so. I have often blended them into the same image.
I still own a bunch of film cameras that have been sitting untouched for a bunch of years. Many of them still have half exposed rolls and sheets of film in them. The dust is starting to show.
It seems that digital has gotten the better of me in recent years. It has consumed my life and my work. Yet, in some ways, it feels somewhat empty in relation to what I used to do with film. Sometimes I think that digital is just too sterile. It could be that digital photography has become a little too mainstream. Perhaps it is all those “look at what I can do” apps used by all those “cell phonies” out there. Whatever it is, it is like a fever I have that won’t go away. And I don’t want it to go away either.
The film I am dying to shoot is large format color and black and white. I am after the experience of working with a large camera, a large piece of film with a highly detailed image. Film for many of us is a higher form of magic.
Not that I hate digital. I actually love it as well. I’ve been doing it for 20 some years. Digital photography allows many things that film can’t possibly do. It offers an amazing amount of flexibility and creative possibility. But it is not the same experience as film at all. It is just a different approach to image making. It is a place that allows for endless variation and easy manipulation. Digital is just a very different sort of magic.
Film photography is hard work. It is not forgiving in the way digital is. There is no camera RAW, automatic this or instantaneous that. You have a shutter and an aperture and a certain amount of light. You only know what you have captured based on what you saw before the camera, past experience with similar situations and what you know about the light, your subject and your film. The image is a gift that you can’t really see until the film is processed. You can’t see anything you have captured, except in your mind, until it is revealed on the processed film. It is more of a gut feeling that you have captured what you intended to capture. You only know that you have caught something. Rather than immediate gratification, there is anticipation. To me, this anticipation for seeing the image adds to the excitement. It is like opening a great gift that you have been anxiously waiting to see. Anticipation is a discipline that seems to have been lost by many in the modern world. Film is a way to resurrect many of the things we all have lost to the immediacy of the computer and the rapid pace of the modern world.
It’s not that I’ll likely go back into the darkroom. I probably won’t. I simply love working with a large format camera. I am addicted to the way it all works. I love the ways it slows me down, makes me think about my subjects, and challenges my vision. I also love to see the image on the ground glass. I love to bend the image focus with the bellows, I love the discipline required to shoot manually with big lenses with real apertures and real shutters. I love to look at the detail and resolution of a giant negative. I love the look and feel of real wood and metal, the dark cloth and working on a tripod. For those who practice large format photography, it is a very satisfying, rewarding and contemplative process. For those who don’t, it might help you to do so.
Besides the things already mentioned, film when used with a scanner, is a digital process. I like to think of it as the other digital. For me, it is not an alternative, but rather a viable method of making computerized imagery. The scanner seems to be a forgotten component in the imaging game. It is for me a beautiful way to combine both worlds.
Perhaps some of the higher end digital camera sensors are getting close to large format in terms of image resolution, but I haven’t really experienced it yet. The cost for most of us is way too high. What I have seen seems to mimic medium format. And in that sense, it is pretty impressive. Yet, the results that can be achieved with film are in my opinion, even better. With film, it has a lot to do with the capabilities of the scanner and the size of the film and the quality of the image being scanned.
Yes, I know that film is scarce, takes special care and does not have the convenience of digital. But there are a growing number of people, especially younger photographers who are eager to know what film is all about. At the same time, there are plenty of established image-makers still using film. Large format cameras are still being manufactured and people are buying up the older ones on eBay to use for their photography. Yes it is costly and the processing is getting harder to find. But all-in-all, the film experience is something that digital hasn’t yet come close to.
Speaking from my own history of using both digital and film, big cameras are awesome, film is spectacular, and the whole experience is magical.
I also believe it delivers a more direct and spiritual connection with the light.
If you know what I’m talking about, you understand the difference. If you hated film, you probably never really used it well. If you never used film, you’ll never know what you missed and you’ll never appreciate what I just said.
You can read about my book “Rethinking Digital Photography” here.
Please have a look at some of my other posts here.
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