therwol Loc: USA

I don't care if anyone wants to use film. Whatever turns them on. It would just be a waste of my time and money for what I consider to be inferior results.

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

I know of nobody that yearns to go back to film when shooting astrophotography. Talk about tedious, frustrating, time consuming process, that ends with very few usable photos. I started with a Nikon F and wasted more film, getting very few results that anybody would give a second look. As soon as digital showed up that changed everything for me, and the astrophotography community. There are amateur astrophotographers who are getting images that equal or surpass the ones produced by the large observatories. I'd bet the James Web doesn't use film.

Canisdirus

Ilford is hardly objective...it's in their interests to do the survey.

I don't doubt that film has gotten a small bump...but it's nostalgia...certainly not convenience...nor control.

DaveyDitzer Loc: Western PA

I shoot B/W film for archival purposes. I have 90 year old prints that are sharp and interesting from the perspective of seeing a different place in time. Hopefully my descendants will have this opportunity.

therwol Loc: USA

I'm pretty sure that when I'm gone, all of my archived film from the past will go to the dump. My descendants will probably not know what to do with it or have the means to do anything with it. I've scanned all of it. I'm trying to pick out some photos of the family that future generations might be interested in. "Might" is the key word. No one in my family at this point seems even remotely interested in any of my pictures taken before they were born. Perhaps your situation is different.

Peteso Loc: Blacks Hills

Neither; I am both. Mostly digital, but am enjoying shooting B&W with a Hasselblad. In high school, I cut my teeth shooting a Rolleifex, owned by the high school yearbook. I stumbled back into film when I bought a Rollei and a Hasselblad for household decor, on a wall with some of my pictures. The Rollei and Hasselblad are pieces of art by themselves, and displayed on floating glass shelves with some of my framed photos adds depth and interest. I fiddled around with the Hasselblad and watched some videos until I learned how to use it. Then I shot some test photos to compare the image quality and sharpness to my Sony A7Riv. I made several discoveries from the standpoint of results and process. At an ISO of 125, the image quality of the Hasselblad was impressive and comparable to my Sony. (At an ISO of 400, well, not so much.) The process of shooting with the Hasselblad is difficult to describe, but I'll give it a shot. There is something very tactile about shooting film with the Hasselblad. It's a mechanical marvel and it's like driving an elegant car...but more rewarding than the car. The process of shooting a picture slows down and requires some different skills than digital cameras. It's also a nostalgic experience. Having said that, shooting film AND (not "or") digital are not mutually exclusive. I'll continue using my digital cameras as I have in the past, but I will use and enjoy my Hasselblad, as well. Shooting digital and film are different experiences, albeit complementary. Hope you all find this of some interest...thanks for "listening!"

Peteso Loc: Blacks Hills

Neither; I am both. Mostly digital, but am enjoying shooting B&W with a Hasselblad. In high school, I cut my teeth shooting a Rolleifex, owned by the high school yearbook. I stumbled back into film when I bought a Rollei and a Hasselblad for household decor, on a wall with some of my pictures. The Rollei and Hasselblad are pieces of art by themselves, and displayed on floating glass shelves with some of my framed photos adds depth and interest. I fiddled around with the Hasselblad and watched some videos until I learned how to use it. Then I shot some test photos to compare the image quality and sharpness to my Sony A7Riv. I made several discoveries from the standpoint of results and process. At an ISO of 125, the image quality of the Hasselblad was impressive and comparable to my Sony. (At an ISO of 400, well, not so much.) The process of shooting with the Hasselblad is difficult to describe, but I'll give it a shot. There is something very tactile about shooting film with the Hasselblad. It's a mechanical marvel and it's like driving an elegant car...but more rewarding than the car. The process of shooting a picture slows down and requires some different skills than digital cameras. It's also a nostalgic experience. Having said that, shooting film AND (not "or") digital are not mutually exclusive. I'll continue using my digital cameras as I have in the past, but I will use and enjoy my Hasselblad, as well. Shooting digital and film are different experiences, albeit complementary. Hope you all find this of some interest...thanks for "listening!"

anotherview Loc: California

Film versus digital, again. Yet, in the march of Time, film photography has become irreversibly passe.

Digital photography now predominates and thrives for offering the photographer way more control over the process of producing worthy photographs.

Little mentioned in this duality, the field of photography has opened to millions more of snap shooters who utilize their built-in cellular telephone camera to take pictures instantly available for viewing and sharing via the Internet.

In addition, digital photo software can later apply a filter to a given color photograph to render it as black-and-white.

Film photography (looking back) has laid the basis for consideration of photography as an artform. The historians of photography say the expressions and techniques of digital photograph rest on the shoulders of film photography.

george19

TLb, but yeah…exactly that.

Composition, exposure, focus…one chance to get it right.

Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area

Spot on!

terryMc Loc: Arizona's White Mountains

No, but I left the card back at the hotel in the card reader...

10MPlayer Loc: California

You make some good points. In the quoted article the writer mentions film users having more control over the image. Really? How. I can do so many things in Photoshop or even Lightroom that I could never approach on film. In my film days I recall using a paintbrush to paint out dust spots or other odd blemishes. In LR all I have to do is click a button. I'd spend hours at a time experimenting with darkroom exposure and development times. I don't miss it.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I’ll just add that to my eye, the resolution from my medium format film camera (Mamiya RB67 Pro S) is superior to any of my digital cameras. Plus for B&W, personally, I prefer the look of a silver halide print. I do shoot mostly digital, but, I still have my film cameras and darkroom.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Is there value in slowing down? Yes. Digital technology has been approached far too often with a "Ready? FIRE!!! Uh, aim? WTF is 'aim'? mentality."

But is using film a solution? If you think it is, then it is for you.

I used film for 45 years. It worked fine. It was all we had. But because I navigated various career opportunities to running the digital side of a very large school portrait lab around 2000, I found parallel replacements to EVERY aspect of film photography I thought I might miss or need.

I was lucky to have the professional learning opportunities of Kodak Professional seminars, Digital Imaging Marketing Association seminars, and Photo Marketing Association International seminars from 1995 to 2010. The film world shrank as the digital world exploded, for all the right reasons. The perspective I gained in the lab and from training photographers to use digital capture instead of film capture has been very gratifying.

I still work with OLD film, by copying it to digital files. But I'll probably never see the inside of a darkroom again. I have zero interest in what, for me, is drudgery.

On the other hand, all the knowledge I gained from decades of film use transferred to digital photography just fine. I get what I want with much finer control, and more quickly, than with film. The advantages of digital bits over chemical atoms for practical imaging applications are far more numerous. The biggest one is that if you have a print, you can show it off in one place at a time, but if you digitize that image, it can be "everywhere all at once," with very little effort. And if you understand the nuances of digital printing, you can make excellent prints on a myriad of papers and other substrates.

If you value slowing down, deliberating, controlling, and thinking about what you're doing, you can train yourself to ignore all or some of the automation that you find on your digital camera. Spend more time planning, lighting, and composing the scenes you're photographing. All the same basic controls are there, just as they were half a century ago. They're just easier to use.

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

Thanks. That's almost a ten bark.