selmslie wrote:
How about simply because they enjoy the analog process?
Someone engaged in the business of photography needs to keep up with the times and use the most cost-effective way to serve high paying, high volume customers. This necessarily means switching to digital and watching costs in order to make a profit.
Similarly, someone engaged in a lot of high volume image capture like wildlife or sports photography would be silly to insist on blowing wads of money on film.
But I don't think that those involved in low volume artistic pursuits are necessarily concerned about the same goals. There is an aesthetic consideration that makes film and darkroom work more appealing to them, particularly if they like to do medium and large format work and even more so if they want to do traditional B&W.
Then there are those who still use both approaches, including people like me who shoot film, scan and post process it and continue to shoot digital when it is appropriate.
I don't think people who return to film or never left it in the first place are angry and they are not stupid Luddites out to prove something. I wish we could say the same for some of the more strident advocates of digital photography.
How about simply because they enjoy the analog pro... (
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I think you're probably right about artists... They'll pursue whatever media they like. I have a commercial side, and an artistic side, but find that digital tools most often satisfy both. I've just never liked the idea of using film, since I "went digital".
Maybe if I needed the characteristics of 4x5 or larger formats, I would temporarily revert to film for a special project... More likely, though, I'd resort to software pathways that would take me approximately where I wanted to go.
What really cemented things for me was the process of the transition. In the lab, we found digital metaphors for everything we had had in the analog world, except for the problems and limitations of the analog world. We found our comfort levels, and they superseded any sentiments we had about film.
We started the analog-to-digital transition with digital printing, which meant digital film scanning for a few years, until the cameras got to a usable professional state.
By the time the film processors came out in 2007, though, the handwriting was on the wall... Our company division was for sale. The mass portrait market as a whole was in deep decline, as social media sharing sites and mobile devices became Mom's photo album of choice!
The digital revolution has democratized photography. Our latest smart phones take better pictures than the vast majority of point-and-shoot cameras from a decade ago.
We're raising a generation of kids who've never known film photography as I knew it. I'm 60. My 17-year-old twins grew up editing video in grammar school. We gave them digital cameras when they were in fourth grade.
What really galls me, and many others, though, is the persistence of some educators to INSIST that their students learn film photography first, before learning digital. There is absolutely no, and I mean ZERO justification for that. Teach a class in it, but please don't make it a prerequisite! Most of the world has moved on, and photo educators and art professors need to acknowledge that. The MEDIUM is not the message... The MESSAGE is the message.
Here on UHH, there are many in the 55+ age range who grew up without computers, with film. Many of them had a photography hobby in their youth, or took photography classes back when there was no digital workflow. They have, or had, a comfort level with that.
Now, as these folks retire, many of them want to return to photography as a hobby, or they have more time to engage in it. But they discover two things:
1) Film, film equipment, and processing are no longer ubiquitous. The supplies are a lot more expensive, and harder to find. But in small volumes, for those with used equipment, film is still less costly.
2) Digital has that learning curve mountain to climb, and the system you need or want can get really expensive, really quickly!
Both of those send some people reeling away from digital capture and back to film capture. And yes, a few of them are running scared.