rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Additionally, I can do things with film I couldn't hope to accomplish with a digital image. The likewise is also true. This also shows that the two are intertwined to some degree, but also separate.
--Bob

Curmudgeon Loc: SE Arizona

No snark just a real question. I too shoot film, Nikon FTn, Nikon F2 and Bronica S. Antiques by most people's standards. What can you do with film you can't do with digital? I may be missing some real opportunities.

clint f. Loc: Priest Lake Idaho, Spokane Wa

You can print on photographic paper wit all its subtleties.

Curmudgeon Loc: SE Arizona

Ah, I forgot the obvious since I no longer have a dark room. I was (gasp), thinking digital: have processed, commercial scan and Photoshop. That really isn't pure shooting film is it?

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

I was not talking about a trip, I was talking about a couple of hours in the afternoon!

Imagemine Loc: St. Louis USA

For me answering this question is simple, the film look

BebuLamar

One thing I don't like about film is the film look.

Bipod

1. All else being equal, collectors will pay more for silver prints than inkjet
print, because they are scarcer, more permanent and more difficult to fake
than inkjet output. (This is even more true for toned prints. There are
sulfide toned prints from the US Civil War that are in beautiful condition.)

More labor is involved in making an optical print, so typcially, fewer prints of
the same image are made. (With a computer printer, you push a button
and it spits out identical "originals" until it runs out of ink or paper.
Anybody with a copy of the image file can do the same.)

Also, negatives can't be copied without loss of quality, and it's easier to
tell if somene has stolen a negative than if somene has copied an image file.
If a photographer burns his negattives, no more prints can be made.
But how is a collector to know if all copies of an image file
have been deleted?

2. Medium speed B&W film has a greater dyanmic range than color
digital sensors. While you can't print all the range, you can scan it.

3. Medium format digital cameras are expensive. Used medium format
film cameras are common and inexpensive.

4. $5 buys you an 8" x 10" capable of producing a 709 Megapixel drum scan.
https://fstoppers.com/film/709-megapixels-examining-insane-detail-large-format-camera-can-produce-233059

5. Larger format digital sensors do not exist. Even space telescopes and
spy satellites have to use arrays of sensors.

6. Film cameras (particularly the mechanical ones) outlast their owners.

7. It's easy to compare and evaluate two film cameras than two digital cameras:
you can load your favorite film into both. Digital camera marketing is usually
a liars' contest.

8. You can load your camera with many different kinds of film: B&W print,
B&W reveral, color print, color reversal, techinical and even IR (plus an
IR-pass filter on the lens). Digital cameras need to be converted--and then
will always be sensitive to IR.

9. Film photography is chemical and the chemicals don't change: sodium sulfite
will always be the same. Film cameras are only electical, electronic, or microprocessor
controlled if you want them to be.

10. Chemistry is more interesting reading the PhotoShop user's manual--and more
generally useful.

11. No need to mess with computers or computer prints. No license agreements,
no malware, no buggy software, no installing updates, no secret firmware.

12. If necessary, you can make everything you need to do film photography is
high school shop and chem lab, except the film and lenses. And in a pinch, a
pinhole will work instead of a lens.

13. Film has been around long enough so that how to use it for all the diffrent
generes of photography is well-understood.

14. Much better and more technically-accurate books are available on film
photography: e.g., Ansel Adams, Michael J. Langford (the ones he wrote,
not the ones published after his death), Fred Pickens, Bruce Barnbaum and
Phil Davis.

15. Film encourages good working habits. Digital enourages "shoot lots and cull"
and "fix it in PhotoSlop".

16. Film processing (particularly sheet film and paper) is more "hands on".
It lets you work closer to your materials rather than a mouse and keyboard.

17. Darkrooms have been part of photography since the beginning. It's impossible
to understand their work or mindset of previous generations of photographers without
experience in the darkroom.

18. An art medium never becomes obsolete. Acrylics did not replace oil paints,
nor did llinoleum block printing replace wood block printing. The best artist
is not the one who uses the latest (or smallest) paint brush.

19. If you want to get the effects a particular artrist got, almost always you have to
use the same medium (even if it's true fresco or stone carving) and techniques. The
same is true for photography.

20. Nearly all of the greatest photographers who ever lived worked in film.

Besperus Loc: Oregon

If you can’t justify shooting film you won’t understand. No matter the format
film used there is a limit as to how many “frames” or film you have to capture that
image. Digitally, 100 or 300 captured bits
of time, still may not be enough to catch
the “look” you’re after. Sure, taking the time and effort of each exposure is possible, however, is that the practice you follow? Motor drives, back in the day were a Godsend to many press photogs.
Shoot like hell carry two or three cameras. Eventually you’ll get one image good enough to publish!

scsdesphotography Loc: Southeastern Michigan

to items 9 and 10. But remember to a chemist, everything is about chemistry. Chemistry is all about moving electrons and moving electrons around. Yes film chemistry is very interesting, but then so is the solid state chemistry of digital sensors.

Leeo Loc: Oregon

Working side by side with both mediums, and find the fruits of both. I can't say how I will do, but, all in all it is just for myself.

Bipod

Perhaps our language is to blame for much of the confusion.

It uses the same word, "painter" for people who paint houses and people
who paint portaits.

And it uses the same word, "photographer", for people who make portraits
or fina art landscapes and those who shoot crime scenes or make passport
photos.

Moreover, it uses the same word "camera" for a Linhof or a Hasselblad
and for the little boxes hanging from the ceiling in stores.

Photography is not the same thing as "image capture". But perhaps in
a few years we will start calling a trail camera a "trail photographer"
and a security camera a "security photographer".